Rick Howard

We have been working diligently on the Clubine4council.com site today.

Tonight, at our cities monthly Fourth Friday event, he will be passing out stickers to promote his website. This is a great marketing move for him because downtown Fayetteville fills up with people on Fridays. With thousands of people roaming the area, he is sure to get his voice heard.

One thing that people don’t realize is you have to advertise your website to your customers. Don’t expect search engine optimization to do all the work. It is just as important to tell people you have a website in your print ads, business cards or general conversation.

If a website is a built on the internet and nobody goes to it, does it generate customers.

Ask the noiseless tree in the woods.

ARC Design has experienced exponential client growth in the last year, leaving us with a list of clients pages long and to-do lists for each client. It is important to increase productivity in the workplace so we can continue to grow.

There are many ways for a company to increase production:

• Hire faster people
• Have less work to do
• Whips
• Offer bonuses
• Downsize threats
• Bullhorns
• Hold the Running of the Bulls in your office

A safer way to accomplish faster production is to use “Hotkeys“. Hotkeys are essentially shortcuts you can make using your keyboard instead of your mouse. This saves time and energy.

One of my favorite websites, Smashing Magazine, offers up a list of the 200 Hotkeys to Boost Production.

No this has nothing to do with the rapper Ludacris.

Today we are going to roll out Mac Signs new website. Yesterday we finished head-shots for Cape Fear Staffing so they should be all wrapped up soon. In addition we are planning on launching A1 Supply Company, DK Enterprise Microfax Secure Check’s new websites by weeks end.

While it seems like a lot, it is completely possible to do.

On a side note about someone else who rolls out, I hope the NFL suspends Michael Vick for the duration of his trial. Even though he may not have personally been involved (like Barry Bonds has never tried Steroids), I know he was aware of what was going on and that should be enough. Maybe if he was as intense about football as he is about dog-fighting, he might have been a good quarterback.

Some clients asked bad questions, it happens. Although the title of the post I am linking to is “10 Most Stupid Client Questions Ever“, I think it is helpful for clients to read this list of questions.

In addition to listing them, it offers reasons why these questions may or may not be applicable.

A good read for everyone over at Reflections, Paul Enderson’s blog.

I love the second part of the title of this blog posting.

“Why Writing it Down Doesn’t Actually Get It Done”

The post goes on to explain some simple steps you can do to eliminate the items on your list. These steps are useful not only in both a personal and a business environment.

So now that I have avoided my own todo list for a few minutes, I should probably get back to work.

for now……………

Who in any customer oriented business hasn’t had a confrontation with an angry customer?

You with the hand up in the back, you’re lying.

As simple as it is for people to tell you to just stay calm, it is easier said then done.

Make sure you check out the tips for these situations at Seeking Alpha.

The article may also be useful to customers. As a customer/client, you must realize that their are a few things you should know:

1. Businesses you deal with want you to be happy.
2. The phrase “The customer is always right” is not right.
3. If you hire someone to do a job for you, more than likely you don’t know how to do it. So do not tell someone how to do their job.

Although as a designer, I do appreciate preferences or suggestions, just not absolute direction.

Internet Privacy is an Oxymoron.

The internet itself is a public stomping ground. So why are people surprised when they don’t get hired or even get fired for things they say or do on the internet.

Read this story about a Man fired, cause: Myspace message. When you get arrested everything you say CAN and WILL be used against you. The same applies to a job. If you do things on job time or outside that COULD affect your employer or their business, It WILL be used against you.

In Malaysia, government employees are now being watched. This is also legal in the US. 77 % of American companies monitor their employees email, according to PC Magazine. In fact, Forbes Magazine even sets standards for companies to follow to legally spy on their employees.

Remember kids, its not just your history or cache file that can get you in trouble, there are numerous programs for your employer to use and of course the best private investigator available, Google.

We here at ARC design use Google for our start pages. In addition to the desktop I use, I also have a laptop at hand.

On my laptop, I receive my email that isn’t necessarily work related, but nonetheless needs to be read. One thing I receive is ADage.com’s newsletter. It had a link to it that I wanted to message to my coworkers, but I did not want to have to open Aol IM just to send one URL, instead I pasted the URL to my Google Start Page’s Notepad and went back to my “work” computer and copy and pasted into my already open AOL IM.

Although not inventive, still a time saver and useful for when you get that Youtube video you just can’t watch at work.

As for the URL in question, it is an article on the Two-headed client. An interesting read for anyone in any business.

That is the code for the day. tdgoogleobbaloogle.ahref

Works great for styling links. Actually that is the last answer to a stressful week.

Ryan, the creative director, took his vacation this week, which meant I had to answer emails and phones regarding web problems.

Most of the contact wasn’t problems, but a constant flow of “when will my stuff be finished?”

EZ-auto is on the verge of being complete as well as Microfax. Also while the boss was out, we finished designing a newsletter for aprivateisland.com, finished up some more AMW changes, made an fla for Old Town Realty’s flash, got photography for Great Expectations, got Proracks into the home stretch, and put together entries for the GDusa awards.

Also attended two meetings with Adam, one in a large group and one with a single person.

I learned a lot about client relations and time management.

In the words of Tom from Better Than Ezra, “It wont be a long time, but it will be a good time!”.

This week has been a good week. Mastergreen and Greenbiz’s websites have neared completion and some other sites are moving out the door as well.

“The Greens” (Mastergreen and Greenbiz) are particularly good because they presented printed versions of their webpages. These pages then listed the changes to their sites which makes it easier to identify problems. This is what all clients should do. By either printing out the pages or clearly identifying problem pages, it makes it easier to fix.

If you send vague instructions like “Can you change that one image to a Panther?” and your site has 50 images, then we have to play information tag and it takes longer to resolve.

It’s the same on our side of the deal, we want your information presented in a manner where your customers or visitors can find it easily. Noone should have to play Where’s Waldo for information.