Graphic design is the first thing that many Web site owners and managers think about when they seek out the services of a Web developer. There is no denying that the graphic design element of a Web site is important, but having a distorted perspective on the importance of design can be a stumbling stone in reaching the goal of creating an effective site. Here are two common pitfalls:

1. Design Myopia—an owner or manager drives a Web design from their personal perspective and preferences. This approach might be fine for setting up a personal page on MySpace, but is most often not a good approach for effectively communicating the quality and unique value of a business or organization to the much broader cross section of those who will be visiting your Web site.

   It's important to know that using conventional elements for the basic design, structure, and style of a Web site is a good thing. People will know how to get around and subconsciously associate your site with other quality sites they've visited. This doesn't mean that your site will be a cookie-cutter template, it means it will possess a unique and professional visual presentation based on professional presentation standards that will best communicate your value.

   To be effective, your Web site should be built using best-practice design and structure principles that have been developed around the needs and conventions of your customers and prospects.

2. Design Centric Goals—Too high of importance is placed on graphic design. A site owner has a vision of what they want their site to look like and once that goal is achieved the project is considered a success. This often stems from Design Myopia as described above.

   While design is important, without design being part of a holistic strategic approach to communication, it becomes impotent.

   A site with no design will trump the most artistically original site if the former has quality content and offers intuitive and easy to use solutions to its target visitors needs. The classic example is the most visited and arguably most successful Web site in the world: Google.

Web sites are a lot like people, their success is ultimately based on the value they contain, not their outward appearance. This is vital to understand so that design is put into its proper place. Web design is still important, it just has to be the dressing for content of real value.

Google is like one of those geniuses who are so recognizable and brilliant that they can get away with wearing an old t-shirt and jeans to deliver a key-note speech. It's fair to say the brilliance of most of us is not as common knowledge.

Web design is the same, once the foundation of quality content is present, professional and usable design is an excellent catalyst to facilitate communicating the value of your site. In my next post I'll get into some specifics about our philosophy and methods for designing Web sites that are modern, appealing and clearly communicate the values of your organization.

Labels: Usability, Web-Design, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 3/24/2008 11:24:00 AM | 0 comments

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Labels: Search-Engine-Optimization, Web-2.0, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 2/01/2008 02:12:00 PM | 0 comments

The content of your Web site is crucial and should be developed to quickly answer the basic questions and needs of your specific target visitors. Research shows that you only have a few seconds to entice your visitors to stay so it's vital that you present obvious choices for them to find the information they need. In addition clear and compelling navigation options need to be present that allow your visitors to easily recognize where they should click to proceed through the sales/information process.

If your visitors become confused about what your site is about or how it applies to them, they are likely to just leave and look elsewhere. The goal of your front page is to allow visitors to qualify themselves as prospects for your business or organization and to proceed through the sales process by accepting a call to action that you offer. Actions can include purchasing online, contacting you for an appointment, subscribing to your newsletter/blog or whatever the specific next step is in your sales process.

The Essential Questions Visitors to Your Site Will Need Answered:

• What do you do? One of the most common mistakes that sites make is not being clear on exactly what they are providing. The more complex of solution you offer the more important it is to provide this answer in easy-to-understand language. The essence of what you do should be the basis of your organization's mission statement, but answering the "What you do" question will also include the specific products or services  you're offering.
• Why you do it? This is related to an organization's vision statement but needs to be expressed in concise language free from industry jargon. Telling visitors "why you do it" is a means of establishing credibility and positioning yourself as an expert advisor for recommending a solution to their needs. 
• Why are you the best choice? This question is the most vital for new prospects and should be answered by your unique value proposition. Your unique value proposition is simply a concise statement of how you meet their need better than anyone else.  In addition to stating your unique value, you need to back it up with real-life examples. The most effective support will be testimonials, portfolio's of your past work, and third party reviews or endorsements if available.
• What can I do? This is the question you want most asked because it means your visitor is satisfied (or at least intrigued) with the answers to their first three questions. They are asking how to proceed through your sales process. This doesn't mean they're necessarily ready to buy, but they're willing to take a step closer. Your site needs to present unambiguous action items for your customers to answer their question of "What can I do?" by providing conspicuous "call to action" links in the body of your front page and the navigation menu.

How To Provide the Answers

Here are a few key principles for answering your visitors' questions : 

1. Be concise. Paragraphs of text on your front page will bury the answers to your visitors' questions and result in a high abandon rate. Your front page, and navigation bar, should be thought of as a map that clearly directs people to more detailed information on the destination of their choice, without them having to think twice about their choices. While, supporting pages will provide more detailed answers the still must avoid verbosity to be effective.
2. Communicate in laymen's terms and avoid your industry's jargon. Realize that much of the internal language your organization uses may have no relevance for your visitors.
3. Provide clear call-to-action choices for all types of visitors. The fundamental questions presented above provide answers for newly aware prospects through "trial" or first-time buyers. If you anticipate clients, customers with an ongoing relationship with your organization, to be frequent visitors you need to accommodate the needs of these visitors. Other visitor types can include press, investors or employers. The answers to each type of visitor questions need to be presented in proportion to the importance they have towards achieving the overall goals of your site.

Labels: Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 1/26/2008 02:20:00 PM | 0 comments

FAQ: How does Adobe Contribute compare to RisingLine's Content Management sites?

Our WebSite 2.0 sites are based on the open source application CMS Made Simple which is completely different than Adobe Contribute. CMSMS offers all the non-technical editing capabilities of Contribute (in a much more productive server side software model) plus it offers all features and capabilities to develop an enterprise class site.

WebSite 2.0 offers all the features that would be available through a developer using Dreamweaver and a content manager using Contribute with the notable differences that WebSite 2.0 is exponentially easier to use and after we configure it on your Web server doesn't require a technical expert "developer" even for many advanced features such as dynamic drop down CSS menu systems.

Here's a brief list of the major differences of Contribute when compared to WebSite 2.0:

• Contribute is client side software. This means that you will only be able to edit a website on a desktop that has Contribute.
• Contribute requires that every user be licensed. This can be a costly process if there are a lot of users set to update a website.
• Contribute is a website editing tool, not a website development tool. A web developer is still required to build the initial website design (usually using Dreamweaver).
• Contribute edits one page at a time, making complex design elements such as navigation menus hard to manage if they aren't controlled through a single source, like a database, Server Side Includes, or XML file.
• Updating a website's content through Contribute can be a much slower process than using a server side CMS system like WebSite 2.0, since each page must be downloaded (and uploaded) individually.
• User cannot access source code, therefore any function code must be edited in a secondary program such as Dreamweaver.
• Contribute is a proprietary solution that is based on the concept that other Adobe software will be involved in the production process . . . our Content Management software is open source and does not require other specific software for optimal performance. In other words, there are no additional software purchases intended for those who use WebSite 2.0

Regarding editing and adding content to WebSite 2.0 . . . any skilled user or developer can work with WebSite 2.0 at their own level so there is nothing that really can't be done, it would just depend on the skill level of the user.

We have different permissions that can be turned on for individual users depending on their expertise (or you can turn them on/off yourself). For example one user may be non-technical so we might just give him/her permission to edit the content of one page, while another may have more technical aptitude so we would give them permission to create & delete pages, move pages around in the site structure, and edit any page.

A user could also be given the ability to edit the design skin(s) for a site if they were skilled in XHTML & CSS. Also, you have direct access to the code level of the content (and even the entire page if you want it) just by pressing a button on the page edit screen.

Another significant difference is that our WebSite 2.0 sites are coded for optimization with the major search engines. There are a lot of details in the code that we optimize for the target keywords of your pages that would require much more manual coding with a Dreamweaver / Contribute platform.

In addition we configure your Web server for optimal indexing with search engines and utilize Web 2.0 technology, namely Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase our clients search engine profile whenever possible. We've written a number of articles on SEO that go into the topic much more: http://risingline.com/blog/labels/Search-Engine-Optimization.html

Labels: Web-2.0, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 1/15/2008 09:08:00 AM | 0 comments

As you may know, Google's Gmail is the most popular, and arguably best featured, free email service available. One of the challenges that I've encountered with it however is its default text-only email signature when composing emails via the Web.

The Best Solution

For Gmail users who would like to utilize graphic/html email signatures, the best solution is to link your Gmail account to a POP client (like Outlook or Entourage). You can then install a custom designed html email signature. If you're a client of ours the instructions for installing the custom email signature in Outlook or Entourage are posted in our FAQs.

This means of course that to have your custom HTML email signature inserted in outgoing messages, you'll need to compose those messages using Outlook or Entourage.

If you would still like to use the Web based Gmail as your primary email platform, simply click on "Settings" in your Web Gmail account (in the upper right hand corner), then choose the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab, and select "Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on" then on the next option select "keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox". Make sure and hit the "Save Changes" button when you're done.

Now all your incoming and sent email (including that you send from Outlook) are accessible on your Gmail Web account. You won't have to worry about going back and forth from Outlook to the Web to find old emails, they'll all be on the Web.

Custom Email Signatures When Only Using Web Based Gmail

There are a few existing solutions for achieving this, the best probably being the Better Gmail Firefox extension . The downside here is that this only works with Firefox and with the "older version" of Web based Gmail. The newer Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension for the newest Gmail version (as of 1/9/08) does not seem to offer the email signature feature of its predecessor.

The other existing option is to drag-and-drop/cut-and-paste a section from another open HTML file displaying the formatted text and images of your email signature into the compose window of your Gmail account as described in this post at Digital Inspiration .

Using the Google Tool Bar to Send HTML Emails or to Insert HTML Email Signatures

A third option that I don't think is documented on Web anywhere is to utilize the Google Tool Bar's "Send to" button to send HTML formatting/graphics via Web based Gmail.

Note: I've tested this for Firefox on Windows XP and IE7 on Windows Vista. I does not work for me using Firefox on Windows Vista.

Here are the steps:

1. Download and install the Google Toolbar by visiting: http://toolbar.google.com/
2. Close and restart your Web browser.
3. In Firefox go to "View", "Toolbars" and make sure there is a checkmark next to "Google Toolbar". If using IE7 go to "Tools", "Toolbars" and insure there is a checkmark next to "Google". You should then see the Google toolbar in your browser, similar to the screen-shot below. Then on the toolbar, go to "Settings", "Options", "More" and make sure there is a checkmark by the "Send to" button.

   

4. The HTML file you want to include in your outgoing Gmail message will need to be uploaded to a Web server. If you plan on adding the same HTML to outgoing messages on a regular basis (such as is the case with a HTML email signature) just book mark that URL.
5. To send a Web based Gmail message with the HTML formatting, open the bookmarked URL (e.g. http://risingline.com/sample.html) then click the "Send to" button on your Google Toolbar and select "Gmail" from the drop down menu. You should see the HTML formatted page, simply type you message above that and hit the "Send" button.

   

Additional Notes:

If you're a user sending a HTML page or email signature that was already developed for you, ignore the below.

When coding the HTML page to be sent. Make sure the path to graphics are absolute, insert a non-breaking space in the title tag (otherwise a hyperlink of the page title will appear above the HTML), and add alternate text to images for those email clients that block graphics. Here's the code used in the above example:

Labels: Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 1/09/2008 03:50:00 PM | 1 comments

One of the biggest ROI killing design blunders for any product or publication is over complexity, and Web sites seem to be one of the most common offenders.

The term usability is used in Web design jargon as the attribute of how easily understandable and navigable a site is, and how readily it meets its target visitors' needs. Almost without exception, each of the millions of Web sites in cyberspace are designed for very specific tasks for a narrowly defined group of people.

Your primary goal as a site owner is to provide a completely intuitive experience for your visiting prospects. In spite of this obvious goal often simplicity becomes lost in unnecessary clutter. When this happens visitors become confused and confused visitors, according to research, tend to make a hasty retreat.

I ran across a great example of usability in design recently when my ancient Osterizer Galaxie Blender broke. While it had provided many years of satisfactory service, it was always a source of mystery and anxiety to me. I just needed it to perform one simple task—blend. But each time I went to use it I had to wonder at all the buttons on the front:

Chop (Off) - Grate (Off) - Grind (Off) - Stir - Puree - Whip - Mix - Blend - Frappe - Liquefy

Am I doing this wrong? Should I be Puree'ing or Frappé'ing this protein shake. And does it matter which off button I push, why are there three? Just for good measure, I would randomly use all the buttons on different occasions—all with no noticeable difference to my concoction.

In browsing for a replacement, I came across the polar opposite of the Osterizer Galaxie—the Oster Classic Beehive. There's just one switch on the whole thing and that one switch does just what I need without having to stop and think about which button to push and why.

While blenders and Web sites don't have much in common, the design principle illustrated by Osterizer's two extremes make great litmus tests for the usability of our own sites.

Now the Beehive looks much cooler than my old Galaxie, I no longer have to hide my blender from guests come over. But the most important thing about well designed products or Web sites is not looks (although good design naturally lends itself to better aesthetics) it's about making the value you offer clear and easy to implement.

I mentioned Steve Krug probably too much, but I know of no who does a better job of explaining the foundational principles of usability and helping people really "get" what it takes (and doesn't take) to create an effective revenue producing Web site. If you're the owner, manager, or administrator of a site I implore you to get your hands on a copy of his classic book, Don't Make Me Think.

Labels: Usability, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 12/11/2007 03:07:00 PM | 0 comments

Web design, when compared to printed design, has some unique pros and cons. A big "pro" is the flexibility of publishing to the Web. A printed marketing piece is designed once and published—most organizations don't find it plausible to go back and reword a paragraph after 10,000 copies have already been printed.

With Web publishing it's relatively easy to have a Web developer make changes after the initial publication and the cost is nominal. Content Management Systems like our own WebSite 2.0 take this benefit a step further by allowing even those who aren't trained web developers to easily login to their site and make text and graphic changes.

On the "con" side of Web publishing a big challenge is insuring your target audience views your publication as you intended. Each type of Web browser interprets how to display any given page of HTML code—for example Internet Explorer may display a page of HTML differently than FireFox or Safari. Noticeable discrepancies can manifest even within different versions of the same browser. So, a site design tested only with Internet Explorer 7 may look great in that browser, but look like a mess in another. While this is a challenge, the risk can be mitigated by testing the majority a site's design and layout on the most popular browsers which are reported monthly by W3C and presently consist of FireFox, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

Not only should how Web sites appear in the primary browsers be considered, but also the individual operating environment that any given user may set themselves should be taken into consideration. For example, if the default font size is set too small by the designer (a common occurrence in my observation) users may be inclined to increase the text display size in their browsers. When this happens the browser will reformat a Web page to fit the larger text. It's prudent to first choose a readable text size and then to design a site to look presentable when text size is kicked up a notch or two.

Another important consideration of your site should be the size of monitor (i.e. the pixel resolution) that your target audience is likely to be using. There are two basic types of design to accommodate this: fixed width and liquid or floating width. There are a lot of considerations when deciding which route to go, but in general, business sites are most often fixed width (as you'll notice by surging through Fortune 500 sites) with liquid width sites typically being to best suited for sites with lots of text copy...reference sites, academic sites, or blogs for example.

Business oriented sites often fall into two categories. The first, to take fresh prospects through a sequential process of establishing your credibility/trustworthiness and persuading them to become a customer. The second is accommodating existing clients who are retrieving information, executing transactions, making a payment, viewing schedules, etc. The best practice principles of persuasion and usability lend themselves most often to fixed width design because fixed width designs allow more control over the visual presentation quality and encouraging concise bill-board style statements and discourage verbose copy that statistics show most people don't read and find counter productive to their goals of being on a site.

Sometimes, there is an impression that the "white space" displayed to left and right of a fixed width design is undesirable. While each situation is unique, this empty space is often a benefit when attempting to communicate to a Web audience. A computer monitor full of text/graphics dilutes messaging by creating clutter. As Steve Krug points out in his classic, Don't Make Me Think, one of the most common roadblocks to creating persuasive and effective Web sites is too much copy . . . he advocates designing Web sites with a "billboard" mindset—concise, appealing messages that tell the target visitor what they need to know without having to wade through clutter.

The white space, which coincidently is only noticeable on displays larger than the site was optimized for, can in fact create a very desirable mechanism to funnel your prospects attention to the most important statements about your organization. That's why you may have recalled seeing those full page Wall Street Journal ads, that some deep-pocketed corporation paid a large sum for, that are mostly white space. It's draws a reader who is being overloaded with pages of information like an oasis in the deserts and captures their full attention.

At the risk of this post becoming verbose itself, I'll stop here and post more on this topic in the future. As I've done before, I highly recommend that anyone responsible for a professional Web site read the aforementioned book by Steve Krug. It's not a book about the technicalities of Web design, but provides an invaluable executive guide to understand the fundamentals of an effective and profitable Web site.

Labels: Usability, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 11/05/2007 10:49:00 PM | 0 comments

I just ran across an article that I have to share, the Last Dance of the Web Bologna.What is Web bologna you might ask? According to Dan Century, the name given for the witty young man who wrote this article, it's "superfluous and garish web design elements that marketing departments love, but the average customer will ultimately loathe."

Like spam, Web bologna is a different type of intellectually insulting processed product that we get served up on occasion whether we ask for it or not. But instead of coming through email it comes at us from the pages of web sites.

Now in Dan's definition of Web bologna, he says that "marketing departments love" it. I'm not sure what marketing departments he's talking about, but I can guarantee that this marketing department is top on the list of bologna loathers. As a matter of fact, I've recently vented my disgust of a newer evolution of Web bologna (the "Site Pal") on this blog.

I think a key principle of life that applies to this topic is that just because something can be done, does not mean it should be done...e.g. if one can belch one's name, that does not mean that it's a good idea to do so when meeting potential customers.

So aside from just being plain cheesy, what's so bad about bologna? It's bad because it exists on the opposite side of the spectrum from good usability—the design principles that have been researched and proven to facilitate visitors to your site becoming customers. In other words, bologna takes away from the whole purpose for a business to have Web site. As a side note, to learn all you need to know about usability, pick up a copy of Steve Krug's classic book, Don't Make Me Think.

I encourage you to take a read through Dan's humorous article. While much of the bologna Dan mentions in his article is extreme and from the past Internet era, the same misguided mindset of "this looks cool, we should put it on our Web page" still exists today with newer technology and tactics.

Labels: Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 8/18/2007 01:15:00 PM | 0 comments

I received a great question today from an ambitious company. They asked about trading links with other sites to increase their visibility in search engines. It's a question that's not too uncommon so I thought it worthwhile to share my response here.

While I don't know all the details of the link sharing that you have in mind, generally speaking, I strongly recommend not posting links to external sites unless it unambiguously provides value for your prospects and clients. The ultimate long term determination of your site's success, and coincidently search engine prominence, will be the consistent quality of the content and resources you serve up on your site—not how many links you have traded.

In theory, trading links with another site does little, nothing, or is actually detrimental to your search engine rankings. You usually gain search engine prominence (called Page Rank by Google) from getting links to your site and usually lose it when linking to another site. So if you trade links most of the page rank cancels itself out and not much is accomplished. I don't want to over dramatize this next point, but if you have your site linked from some sites it can be actually be detrimental:

"Google is known to actively penalize link farms and other schemes designed to artificially inflate Page Rank. How Google identifies link farms and other Page Rank manipulation tools are among Google's trade secrets." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_ranking)

When sites advertise that they want to trade links a red flag immediately goes up in my mind that these sites might not be good company to keep from Google's perspective. But even if they are, by trading links there's not much to gain.

As a rule of thumb, the more links you can get pointing to your site the better, the fewer you can get leaving your site the better.

I'm going to stop myself here because I can go on an on. The basic principal to remember is, make your site for users, not for search engines. (This is a quote from Google)

Here are some good sites from Google with their guidelines.

• How can I create a Google-friendly site?
• Webmaster Guidelines

Also, I've written a number of other articles on this topic you might find helpful:

• 7 All Time Best Strategies to Increase Traffic

• SEO is free | Top 25 backlink sources

• SEO is free | The truth about Search Engine Optimization

If you have any questions about SEO, don't hesitate to give us a ring.

PS. I should mention that if you have resources available for developing your web presence and would like to increase awareness, one of the most effective strategies is to implement a blog and make the commitment to post new content on a regular basis that will add true value for your clients and prospects. When this happens, your site can become like a media station that broadcasts out into the Web rather than just a brochure waiting to be discovered. In my opinion, active blogs (they must be maintained!) with properly optimized RSS feeds, and which are listed in the prime blog directories, offer the most significant opportunity today for increasing awareness of your site on the Internet.

Labels: Search-Engine-Optimization, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 5/16/2007 03:16:00 PM | 0 comments

Where is your company's domain registered and when does it expire? If you're like many executives and managers you have no idea. How do I know? I talk to them all the time.

Here's a typical scenario: ten years ago your company launched a web site...no one in-house knew where to start so the person who claimed to know how to program their VCR was given the task of registering a domain for the company. This person registered the domain but used their name, address, and hotmail account. What's more this individual may no longer even be employed by the company, probably could care less, and hopefully is not disgruntled with their former employer.

What would be the consequences to your business if your Web site was suddenly gone and all your company email accounts ceased working or now featured a porn site? Does this sound crazy? While this scenarios might be on the extreme, you are guaranteed some degree of misery and loss if you let your registration lapse.

If you are not immediately and unquestionably certain where your domain is registered, and more importantly to whom your domain is legally registered, stop everything right now and get it fixed!

Here's how:

• Access the Whois public database and enter your domain name. Assuming your domain does not have a private registration, look through the list of information and find the following:
• Registrant Name: If this is not your name or the company's name you're at risk.
• Admin Name: Do you know this person? Do you trust this person with your entire business? Your domain needs to be registered under a name of a corporate officer, owners or executives—not an employee. All it takes is one disgruntled employee to reek havoc on your business.
• If you need help registering, renewing, or transferring a domain name please visit http://risinglineweb.com or call one of our domain registration experts at 480.624.2500.

More information on domain registration:

• How to protect your domain name from hijackers, porn pirates, and your registrar.
• Why it matters to master your domain
• For general information on domain registration visit the RisingLineWeb domain registration page and see the FAQ tab.

Labels: Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 5/08/2007 08:02:00 AM | 0 comments

How much does a web site cost? We get this often and it's a fair question. Regardless of all the sales and marketing propaganda about needs, emotional purchase triggers, etc., the cold hard fact remains that most purchase decisions are constrained, and often decided, by immediate budget parameters.

Our standard practice is to never throw out a price....it's kind of like asking "how much is a vehicle?" Well the prices range from $250 for a used moped or $50 million for Caterpillar 797B 380 ton earth mover—it all depends on your goals and the budget with which you have to work.

So what about low bids? They conjure up a conflict of emotion in most people—joy, greed, elations, then caution, suspicion, resentment. Well from an insider's perspective as low bids relate to marketing and web development here's my honest advice:

First, always be leery of companies that just throw out a low price without much encouragement. Be conscious that with web and identity design your purchasing a lens through which the image of your organization will be projected to the world. I doubt if many of us walk into Wal-Mart and buy the cheapest pants and shirt available to prepare for a big meeting. The same forethought should be given to any bids that directly reflect the image of your organization.

Assume the worst and prove your assumption false by researching the question, "Why is this bid the lowest?" There is a reason. Did they not take into account all your needs? Are they implementing a loss leader sales tactic? Is their quality sub-par?

A low bid is always relative, you must consider the qualifications of the other bidders. For example I could send out a web design RFQ here in the Treasure Valley and get responses ranging from $500 from a high school kid to $50,000 from a marketing firm with a big national portfolio. All bids would meet the same technical requirements but obviously there is a lot more to consider than that. To avoid the impossible task of evaluating too broad of options, take some time to qualify your pool of bidders before submitting your RFQ.

In a pool of comparable quality bidders, low bid is not always bad. The good reason that someone is a low bidder is because they've developed highly efficient repeatable processes and are that much ahead of their competitors. I don't want to be so bold as to say that we've completely reached this idealistic state, but our entire business strategy is built around the concept of creating a new market; a market in which we have no competitors who offer our level of quality our price ranges. We can't claim any credit for this strategy—it came out Harvard Business School and has been shared with us commoners in one of the best business books of all time, Blue Ocean Strategy.

So the important points are this—try to narrow the spectrum of your bid pool and spend serious time evaluating the proposals from the bidders you do choose. Base your decision on objective considerations instead of the more emotional price factor. Keep in mind, the lifetime cost-benefit of your choice and the image your contractor will reflect on your clients and prospects. Low bids are not always bad, they just have more to prove.

Labels: Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 3/23/2007 02:12:00 PM | 0 comments