Infinite Web Design

You’re a large organization with divisions and departments and teams. You have vice presidents and managers and team leaders. You have a web team that manages your massive public web site. They have designers and developers and a manager. So, I ask you, who should decide what content goes on the website? Do you let anyone send content to the web team for posting. Does the vice president from Marketing call the shots? How about the manager from customer relations? Or the team leader from product development? Perhaps the manager of the web team? What is the right answer? Who should be the gatekeeper for the website? Should you even have one?

The answer is not so simple. If you put one person in charge and choose wrong you could end up with a jerk with a God complex running everything, crushing good ideas and suffering from a major case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome related to any ideas they didn’t come up with. On the other hand the right person can supply a unifying vision, provide a firm hand to keep the website from becoming confusing and cluttered or a political battleground for company infighting. But how can you pick the right person? We can learn from America’s Founding Fathers on this one and create a division of powers with checks and balances to keep people from getting power crazy.
Continue reading American History 101

We’re happy to announce another site launch, this time for International Global Products. Right now the site is a simple 3 page web site with the company’s contact info and an introduction to some of their products. A few of the sites we’ve launched recently are our clients’ first forays onto the web. They are taking those first baby steps of setting up a basic website and learning to use it as a tool to help them do business. We wrote about this a while back, this is the Publish phase of getting a company online.
Continue reading New Site: International Global Products

Getting to know a potential business partner in an unfamiliar industry can be a daunting task. For business’ looking to hire a web design or technology fim they are often faced with trying to evaluate the skills of people who essentially speak a foriegn language and perform magic. Intelligent business people are left wondering what the hell programmers are talking about as soon as the try to delve into the details of a web designers skills or the work they did on past projects. Generally, business people won’t have the slightest idea what questions to ask to discern if a potential firm will be able to help. This is of course not their fault, they should not be expected to understand the arcane knowledge that fills a programmers mind or have the years of experience and training of a skilled visual designer.

So how can a business person go about finding and working with programmers and designers if they don’t understand what these skilled professionals do? They can look for ones that know how to interact with business people. Every web site or design is unique and should be, in order to meet the unique needs of the client. Good programmers and designers will take time before launching into building something to understand what you do and explain what they will do. If that isn’t a part of your project then you are taking one hell of a risk that your project will be off target and the results disappointing.
Continue reading Establishing a Working Relationship

We are pleased to announce that Motorbilly.com is now online and that Ann Arbor based DJ Del Villarreal is happily posting fresh content there for your enjoyment. The content is being gradually added as Del has time, but he has already started to add announcements, links, and other material. The launch is what we refer to as a “soft launch”. The site is ready to go but the content is being added gradually. The benefit of this is that while Del is not yet publicizing the web site much on his radio show or at concerts or dances the search engines are starting to pick up the site and add it to their indexes.

Del is a great DJ and a good guy so if you have an interest in rockabilly, swing, or classic rock n’ roll be sure to visit his site and check out what he is up to.about products credit watchcredit america card expresscard laws credit 2007cards credit 0 ratecredit american reportunion credit 7first american credita credit and t card t Mapmerchant casino internet offshore texas accountaccount merchant casino offshore texascasinos slots allminimum online $10 casino depositmerchant credit card account bank gamblingagainst gamblingbill casino $10 superstitioncharles st mo casino ameristar in Mapsch ringtone 630 samsungmonophonic ringtone nokia 6340iringtone free a680 samsung sprintkeypress samsung ringtone a300amc south barrington theatersouth dating adult in barrington illinoistheaters amc barringtoncdm alltel audiovox 8910 ringtone Mapcity casinos alantic ratingsand hotel allegheny casinocasino allstar lanescasino caliente agua rancho miragecasino kappa mountain stone 1993albuquerque casino amccasinos $1 blackjackgambling adolescents addictions Mapdbz chichi bulma pornon chick chick pornchicken pornchicks porn lesbianchid pornochidren ics pornchile pornographypornstars chilean Map

With change comes risk. Simple enough, except that failing to change can be a bigger risk as your business stagnates, gets overtaken, is left in the dust by your competitors. So perhaps it should be taken as a given that a company should be somewhat introspective. Regularly evaluating the performance of individuals and the organization and striving to be better than ever before at whatever it is you do.

Change happens very quickly on the Web. Even the best websites become outdated very quickly as new and better technologies and best practices are developed. What was great in 2002 is often regarded as tired or dated in 2005. This can be unsettling to a company that invested heavily in a site only to find that it must be thrown out just a few short years later. To this designers and developers who are used to the fast paced nature of the Web generally only shrug and say “deal with it”.
Continue reading Change and Risk

As a business person faced with the task of hiring and overseeing the work of a design or development firm it can be extremely difficult to know if you are hiring the right people. Sometimes you will have a sense about the people you are considering hiring, but often you lack the technical skills required to make an informed hiring decision. Even worse, unscrupulous developers can build systems that other developers will not be able to decipher, leaving you dependent on the original developer for the life of the system. This means that your bad hiring decision can haunt you for decades. Being trapped into using a particular system is known as “Lock In” and it is preventable.
Continue reading How to Avoid "Lock In"

Most web design and development projects will feature many individuals trying to work together to create a web site. Some of the common roles of individuals involved on your project include:

• Business Stakeholder
• Content Creator
• Marketing Specialist
• Copywriter
• Web Designer
• Web Developer
• Graphic Designer
• Usability Specialist
• Information Architect

One person may fill multiple roles on the project but there is often a team of people building the site working with a team of people who are experts in the site content and business. In order for the project to go smoothly everyone must contribute their expertise and support each other.
Continue reading Knowing Your Role in a Project