jeremyfoster.ca

I read a great post on Six Revisions about Drawing the Line: 6 Things you shouldn’t tolerate in projects. There are many factors that go into making a project great and it’s amazing to me how easy it is to go from great to suck when discussing client-needs on their website. The six things are:

1. Client-Centered Design – the client wants their site to be designed to their preference and not pay attention to usability, accessibility or basic layout.
2. Cheapskate Clients - the client always finds a way to sneak work in (scope creep) and many times its tough to avoid.
3. Terrible Logos – another result of having poor planning and even worse design – *hint* if you used MS Paint – it sucks.
4. Bad Names – this would include company names and urls
5. Bad (or No) Business Strategy – I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “a website is a website” and – “we’re just going to use the site as a contact page – nothing else….” Use the web to your advantage – drive business and engage customers.
6. Bad Copy – there’s no excuse for poor grammar or spelling errors – ANYWHERE on a website. It’s a direct reflection on your attention to detail, knowledge, and level of education. Seriously – people will trust you more if they’re not paying attention to your horrible copy – *hint* – hire a copywriter.

These are all things that drive me bats when working with new clients. My existing clients are educated enough and care about their online presence to know that good design, good planning, solid business acumen, good copy and trusting the “web dude” are great investments!

2BR Suite at Pueblo Bonito Sunset

Yes it’s true, my wife and I have purchased two timeshares in Cabo San Lucas Mexico on e-Bay. Since a few people have been asking I thought I’d give the “Coles notes” version of what this process is like and what to expect if you want to do the same. First – some background. When people grow tired of their timeshare or they foreclose on it, the resorts that own the vacation “rental” (which is what a timeshare is).. buy the timeshare back from the owner. What then happens (in short form)

• Timeshare is sent to a timeshare-holdings company
• Holding company puts the timeshare up for sale on e-Bay
• People bid (usual e-Bay stuff happens here)
• Winner of the bid has won the rights to use the timeshare
• Once paperwork is signed (digitally at first, you must get final “deed” documents signed, notarized and faxed back to holdings company) you own the timeshare

My wife and I were married at Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach on the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula. We couldn’t afford to stay at the resort but since some of our family had bought timeshares online we thought we’d watch e-Bay for a timeshare at Pueblo Bonito. After winning this auction (we paid $350 to win it) we paid our paperwork (transfer fees) and maintenance fees for 2010. What this means now is that we can stay in a luxury studio suite at the resort for 1 week every year for the next 25 years. We pay $495 for the entire week (7 days). This is actually what the resort charges PER NIGHT for the same room…

Last week, just for fun we bid on another resort, Cabo Villas on the Sea of Cortez side of the Baja Peninsula which was where my bachelor party was held (on the roof at the Baja Brewing Company.) We actually won this auction for $1. With the transfer fees, our costs were $300 US for a timeshare which if purchased through the resort would cost about $14,000 US.

Cabo Villas Beach Club

Essentially what you pay for is your right to book a week at the resort every year and pay a fraction of what it would cost to book the same accommodations through the hotel. We have had no problems dealing with either the timeshare closing companies (or escrow agencies) or the resorts once we have become owners.

There are tons of timeshares for sale on e-Bay and not just in Mexico but in the Bahamas, Tahiti, Hawaii, Fiji and even in Banff….The great part is that you can join RCI and trade up your timeshares to stay in resorts all over the world. I’ll blog some more about RCI in another post to explain how the banking and trading of timeshares works.

It’s ok – you have my permission, not that you needed it anyway. I was asked to build you a website, help you with setting up your server, hosting, boosting your search ranking and “doing the magic” that is web development.

But free, online services like WebMatrix and wix.com seemed so easy because the $200 I was going to charge you for my time was too much.

It’s ok, no hard feelings. When you realize there’s 10,000+ other websites out there exactly the same as yours and you spend 8 hours trying to float the image to the right or left of your biography text-block…. I’ll just refer you back to the mighty Wix!!

Good luck and carry on!

In response to a letter that Doug Riches posted on his blog about Earl’s restaurants only catering to a ‘majority’ demographic in the areas the restaurants are situated, there is one sentence that absolutely blows me away.

No matter which position we take, one group of customers is going to stop visiting us. There is no compromise; there is no way we can keep everyone happy.

This is bull-shit. Customer service is not limited to your rich business clients who come in from 11:30am to 1:30pm, drink stale Stella Artois in ridiculous beer ‘stem-ware’, order way-overpriced medallions of meat served in white Ikea dishes and tip $3.00 for a $65 meal.

Customer service is about catering to every demographic across all races, places and faces that happen to choose your establishment to spend their hard-earned money.

High-chairs (or lack thereof) is not the issue here. The issue is that Earl’s is shunning families due to the fact they believe there’s more value in choosing the business client (i.e.- they’ll bring in more cash….) In reality, a family of 3 or 4 is still going to generate a greater bill and probably return more often if the service and meal is good.

I really hope Earl’s pulls its head out of its proverbial ass and makes this right.

Well…after much humming and hawing and threatening to go off of Facebook I decided not to. Those who follow me on Twitter already know why and if you don’t manage your FB privacy settings, perhaps take a look at a few articles regarding how Facebook views how they “own” your data…

Based on the feedback I received from friends, RSS subscribers, twitter(ites?) I decided to leave Facebook as the catch-all for the feeds from (mainly) Twitter, this blog, Tumblr, YouTube, Blip.fm, Last.fm….etc. The way I use Facebook however has changed. I very rarely, if ever respond to messages, or comments on the Facebook site. I simply respond to the notification email, and Facebook is smart enough to append that to the relevant post… I don’t actually have to go onto Facebook!  If I get a direct message in my inbox, I will respond to you either with a phone-call or an email – and not through the FB inbox.

This is probably just me being paranoid, but the way things have been going with Facebook’s privacy becoming more open and “shared” there will come a day that those “inbox messages” eventually become, searchable, sharable and LIKE-able….Not cool – especially if you talk about stuff with friends that you don’t really want on your wall one day….or sold to the highest bidder.

All said and done, I haven’t ditched Facebook yet and after looking at the data as it pertains to sharing, discussion and re-posts of things I’ve posted, Facebook is the king of sharing. Almost 90% of the stuff I post is viewed, shared, “liked”, and tweeted from Facebook – so I’d be silly to kill that channel.

So – for those who follow, expect more crazy links from me on wherever you might live online!

As a web-developer, I am always telling my clients that they are publishers. There’s no such thing as a ‘static’ website anymore if they wish to reach out and engage the audience they want to attract online. Sure blogging is one avenue I sell them, but there’s also email campaigns, Facebook and even Twitter for the more “adventurous” of my clients!

The one rule I tell them though is to never assume people want to read their content. ALWAYS give your potential audience the choice to consume your content.

I will never tell you to stop creating content. I will never tell you to stop your blog or your email campaigns or twittering or whatever content you are passionate about creating. The lesson here is not to assume I want to read it. Just because I’m a web-developer doesn’t mean I want to read in-depth articles about coding or standards. Just because I go to church doesn’t mean I want to read massive emails quoting scripture or pass on chain letters about God’s love. All those things are great and it’s awesome that you have the freedom to publish that content when you want and as much as you want.

Just give me the choice to consume it or not.