- Web design industry jargon glossary and resources — Smashing Magazine
- 20 Facebook tips you might not know — Hongkiat
- AudioBoo is new talk of the net — The Guardian
- 11 striking findings from an eye tracking study — Problogger
- Using Google Earth to visualise the toll of war — Google Lat Long Blog
- 50 excellent circular logos — Web Designer Depot
- How to create your own community website for free —Smashing Apps
- 50 iPhone apps for web designers — App Storm
- Ashton Kutcher Twitter quit threat — The Guardian UK
- Widgets everywhere!
Work from anywhere using Web 2.0
One of the beauties of being alive in the Information Age is the way technology can transform the way we do business & live our lives.
As companies embracing Web 2.0 technology can prove, it is incredibly easy to empower staff with the freedom to work from anywhere – and be more productive! We’ve been testing it & getting great results.
If you’re an employee, imagine if you didn’t have to travel everyday to work & could wear what you wanted. If you’re a CEO or business owner, imagine if your overheads were less, you could scale with ease & your staff were producing better results.…
Continue ReadingSetting up a CRM: 2 key areas to define in the sales process of a service-based web design business
Communication is the key with so many aspects of business. Setting up a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool and sales process is no different.
The steps and cut off points in your sales process need to be clearly defined for 4 reasons:
- so that your staff can understand what is required
- to effectively forecast your sales pipeline by assigning success probabilities to each progressive step
- to generate useful sales reports that are readily understood by all parties
- to enable sales staff to follow up on opportunities to move them through the different stages
At the risk of sounding like a safety video on a plane, every sales process is subtly different.…
Continue ReadingWeekly round-up
- How to improve your branding with your content — Smashing Magazine
- Optimising conversion rates – it’s all about usability — Smashing Magazine
- Non-profit website design: examples and best practices — Smashing Magazine
- Complete beginners guide to information architecture — UX Booth
- Visual hierarchy in web design — Theme Forest
- Twitter surges past Digg, LinkedIn and NYtimes.com with 32 million global visitors — Tech Crunch
- Google values MySpace deal at 75 million a year or less — Tech Crunch
- What we know about the Apple Tablet so far — Tech Crunch
- Google Products’ new look logos — Google Blog
CRM implementation: 5 key questions to ask your staff to help you customise reports
Even starting this article, I see a distinct theme coming through all of my suggestions concerning CRM.
Definition.
Without understanding your desired outcome, no technology will ever deliver the information you need to run your business.
Once you have your sales process defined, then you need to find out what information you want to report on. This might be pipeline or performance, by customer, by sales team, by sales staff, by vertical, by item or by service. It could be any number of things.
The key is to define the custom reports that are the most important for your business.…
Continue ReadingIf Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers
I recently discovered this amusing letter on a few forums, blogs and websites. The original author is unknown.
… Continue ReadingDear Mr Architect,
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.
CRM – Sold the dream, lived with the agony, but here comes the light
The true story of implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management tool in a web design business and 7 steps to reduce the agony.
“It can do anything!”
“What was your question? Oh yep – definitely can do that, no problem.”
“I’ve been through your list – all achievable. Have I shown you how Massive Company X is doing it? You can be just like them.”
If you’re looking for a customer relationship management (CRM) tool or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool, then you might have had these discussions with the various products’ sales staff.…
Continue Reading