Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with business and web

Web template for cleaning business?

zeikka — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:39:17 -0800

Where can I find simple, yet professional and elegant web template/ Wordpress theme for cleaning business? I'm helping someone who's starting a small scale residential/ business cleaning service. I have domain and cheap hosting for her, but would like to find nice web template to use.

Wordpress theme would be ideal as I'm not very experience web designer or don't have experience with complex publishing system. Free would be great this as is very small scale.

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house?

MeatLightning — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:33:22 -0800

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house? Hi all -
I manage a mid-size e-commerce website. We currently work with an agency to build and maintain our site. We are considering hiring a dev (C# / .NET, SQL) and taking over development... or at least much of it (still may go out of house for UX, front-end dev).

Anyone have any advice, experiences, warnings, etc they can share?

Have you gone down this road? How did it go? What should we watch out for?

thanks in advance!

Help me become a web savvy mogul superstar! (on a budget) :)

miss lynnster — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:49:00 -0800

I'm about to start some new business ventures and my current web host has not been doing a very good job so I want to switch while things are still small. Helllp! By this time next year I plan to have four business websites up and running. (Right now I have one site and two domain names, so I'm planning on doing a lot of work this year.) Recommendations on how to keep this virtual growth as painless, smart and profitable as possible so that I can focus on the work itself, not on damage control with my host. (I've spent three hours on the phone with them this week alone because I haven't been getting my e-mail. They're just awful.)

Here are the sites I plan to set up:
1) I own the domain. My current design site features my resume, portfolio, and room to ftp client files. In the future I'd like to develop that ftp area to be a separate password-protected client area.
2) I own the domain. I need to redesign my old jazz vocalist website and launch that within the next two months. (I don't want MySpace to be where my main web presence is, so please don't suggest that. I need my own domain with MySpace as a minor supplement that points to it.) Although I don't plan for mine to be so Flash-heavy, the content of this site will be similar to this, and should eventually include an area to purchase CDs.
3) Domain needs registering. A new business site set to launch within 3 months, probably no more than ten main pages with one form questionaire page. There might be a variety of photo galleries added over time.
4) Domain needs registering. Probably utilizing a blog template, this site is an online community startup to launch in a year or so, the timing to be dependent upon how the new business progresses (they're tied together). This could end up being a huge and very successful project down the road with a great deal of income potential, but only time will tell. For at least four months, this domain will be a blank canvas waiting for paint while other things get accomplished first.

So here are my questions:
A) What host would you recommend for hosting these four sites (with room to grow)? I want to be sure that the prices are reasonable and don't become cost prohibitive as my businesses grows and traffic increases. I've heard dreamhost is good but when I tried to contact their customer service for an estimate they didn't e-mail me back. I figured that was a bad sign so I gave up on them.
B) My previous domains were registered with Network Solutions. I know I probably don't want to register the new names with them. Should I go through the new host or how do you recommend I register the names? (I already know what they're going to be so I need to snatch them up asap while they're still available.)

Okay... advise away!!!! Thank you in advance for your help. :)

What is an editorial plan?

divabat — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:35:38 -0800

What's an editorial plan? Do topic-focused weblogs (like the Gawker Media ones) have one? How do they work out what sort of content goes on their blog? I revisited my past question on magazines because I've got the beginnings of a web magazine but need some help on focusing my content. The comments there mention editorial plans, but I can't seem to find concrete examples of such.

I have a stronger idea of whom my webzine is targeted towards, and some ideas of what content I want in there. However, my idea can easily devolve into tangents, and I'm looking for ways to better structure the content of my webzine. (What categories? What can go in and what can't? Who contributes? What are the guiding principles?)

I tend to work best by example, so any examples or suggestions for this would be greatly appreciated. I'm also working on the more business-y side of things, but I feel I need to get this aspect down pat before I work on the rest. Or should I just start up the site, do a few entries, and run with it?

How to stop torrents at work?

numlok — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:13:20 -0800

I'm sure this question will not make me the most popular student at the dance, but is there a way to identify (via IP) machines running BitTorrent clients within an internal network (ie. work)? My company has around 50 employees, and the old, "Please don't torrent at work" doesn't seem to be doing much good anymore. It brings our email and web browsing to a near standstill, and dropping by the "usual suspects" is not only tiresome, but doesn't seem to find all the sources of traffic any longer. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:58:40 -0800

What's the best approach to take with the a lead software developer after being left holding the ball? About a month into a new full-time development gig (after almost a decade of contracting/freelance for me) the lead developer left for a two week vacation with assurances that we were more or less feature complete and the only thing left to do before launch would be cleaning up a few bugs.

Lies. (duh)

While on vacation we've found huge areas of functionality that were unimplemented, and others that were implemented so fragilely that they were bound to break. It's been a week of hell scrambling to get everything finished while at the same time not throwing lead-developer under the bus with the higher ups.

Lead developer has a huge amount of seniority. I'm the only other member of the team with any experience in the software industry (other developers have less than a year of professional experience). There's no formal project management at the company.

I'd like this job to work out. What approach do I take with the lead when he gets back? Do I point blank (in private) confront/talk-to him about the the lack of organization/management and what I view as a lackadaisical attitude towards developing code that actually works? Do I accept this is just his MO and work around it while covering my ass at the same time?

Any advice on ways to deal with this situation in a positive way would be appreciated. I'm used to being brought into situations like this as a contractor where I can drop in, hurt feelings, get something done, then move on to the next gig. I don't think that works in a situation you'd like to work out long term.

What email service does your company use?

x41-pbj — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:02:14 -0800

What email service does your company use? The small company I work for (10 employees and growing quickly) uses GoDaddy now, primarily for historical reasons, and it's pretty terrible. Any recommendations for enterprise email services?

How can I fend off the boss with data while I do my job of building a great website?

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:48:33 -0800

What kind of web stats can I provide my bosses, to satisfy their hunger for "measurable stats" but avoid going down a rathole and losing focus? I joined a very old line company mid-way through last year as the manager of the web team. The company is a few hundred years old, and is roughly in the retail business. The company's clients are generally older, well-heeled, and relatively technophobic. The website itself is mainly brochure ware for the company, but has extensive and detailed on-line product catalogues. There is no e-commerce component. My hiring was coincident with the re-launch of its website. There's little interactive "2.0" functionality to it, but some pretty cool stuff with regard to displaying items for sale.

When I was hired, I knew all of this, and basically took the challenge on to, over time, redo the website and bring it into the 21st century (employer user-centered design techniques, rich interfaces, etc... make the whole experience a lot more engaging). I have built out a product roadmap with a lot of this functionality, but my boss and the CEO (his boss) don't want to hear any of it, until we can establish some benchmarks for success and some reasonable goals. The first thing they are looking to show is the adoption rate, i.e.: how have the traditional customers taken to the new platform? Has this led to additional sales activity, has it lessened costs (i.e.: do we need to do shorter runs of print catalogues because more customers are now exclusively doing product research with us on-line?), and so on.

Those are worthy pursuits, but the problem is that we have not even been through a full business cycle, and the site's functionality is so basic, I cannot think of anything past basic stats like pageviews/customer or unique visits by each customer trended over time (however, until we get through a business cycle or two, these data will be skewed). Just the most basis stuff.

Problem here is that the CEO has a monomaniacal focus on everything being data-driven and my boss seems unable to push back on him, if he even wants to. My viewpoint, based on all of the above is that if we build a state of the art site and make elegant, engaging and highly useful, we will attract a new generation of customer. Any attempts now to justify what's been done, or what we're going to do (other than focus groups), I think might be premature or misleading.

Can anyone offer any help?

web-based business

bethrossrn — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 04:28:17 -0800

I have an idea for a web-based business and not only need a web page but a program to keep track of units/credits, no money involved. It would involve marketing/advertising which I have experience in but no experience in computer programming. Where do I go from here?

Where can I find a partner for my business?

jbb7 — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:35:17 -0800

Where can I find a partner to help me build a business based on a Web service? I'm 18, I'm not going to be in college for at least a year, and I can fund the venture for 6+ months out-of-pocket. But the programming is far too much work for just one person. The business is the kind that requires a few servers, some programming, and some marketing--it doesn't require much money to bootstrap.

I've been working very hard on it since the end of November, but if I continued working alone, it'd take until mid-July or later until I even had a working prototype. I firmly believe in the idea, but I just don't see myself being able to do all of the work alone. (Though I have the technical skills, it's just too much work.)

None of my friends are tech people, and nobody at my high school does much programming. I've also searched for 2 months through acquaintances, to no avail.

So, how can I find other people to help me who are of a similar age and whom I live near? Does anyone have any experience starting a business like this with a partner who wasn't already a friend? Should I look for an employee rather than a partner (i.e., pay a salary instead of share a stake in the business)? Should I cast a wide net and look to team up with somebody who lives somewhere else in the U.S. ? (I'm in Chicago.) Has anyone had experience starting a Web-based business with someone whom they haven't even met in person?

Footnote: I realize the whole teen-starts-Web-business thing is a cliché, and this thing could totally crash and burn. I'm more interested in advice relating to my search for a partner--but don't worry, I have no irrational illusions that this business will bring incredible success. I only know that it's a fun project and a good learning experience.

Footnote 2: I applied to Paul Graham's Y Combinator Summer Founders' Program, but they turned me down (and my having no partner was likely a big part of their reason).

Where can I find some good "arguments" online for paying more for web design?

jeremias — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 17:37:29 -0800

I'm looking for factual arguments to my boss that paying good money for a good website is worthwhile. My boss is a very successful entrepreneur and his latest project has taken off in a big way. He has decided that the current website needs a redesign and went ahead and hired a freelancer to do everything from developing a strategy to building the site. I happen to know that we could do much better than this designer- there are small design firms that could really make our site great- but they will inevitably charge more than this fellow. Additionally, my boss seems to have a distrust of design studios or branding teams and prefers an individual.

So where can I find some good "arguments" online in order to persuade him to change his mind? I need clear cut facts about successful design and ROI that speak to a businessman's way of thinking.

How does the trademark system work?

Bjkokenos — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:11:05 -0800

I run a small local computer repair business. I have a website and i have acquired a DBA (assumed name) in the name that i use for my business. the problem is that my website, lets call it computer repair man for example, i own THECOMPUTERREPAIRMAN.com. the site without the word "the" infront of it is taken by someone else. If they havent trademarked "computer repairman" can I? Or if they were using it first without TM do they still have the rights to it? If they have already done it, can i trademark "the computer repairman"? How else can i protect my companies identity??

Any advice for a would be self-employed web consultant?

pasd — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 11:58:34 -0800

I am considering starting up a small (one person) web consulting business, offering web design and development, newsletters, blogs etc. Advice from those with relevant experience would be much appreciated. Background: I have always been an employee, mostly for large organisations and I'm currently employed in a reasonably well paid, but drastically under challenging and largely un-related area (technicalish writing). I am young enough (late 20s) and unencumbered enough (supportive girlfriend, no kids, little debt) to be considering this move seriously. I have previously worked in web development and design. I am not a stellar designer or developer, but I think I know enough to do good job and have a good eye for what needs to be done in terms of web projects. I am based in Toronto, Canada.

Of particular use would be advice that relates to: Marketing (I'm thinking a blogging on the Internet and how it relates to your business as well as networking/referrals).
Fees (I'm aiming for reasonable but sustainable, hard data on the market is surprisingly hard to come by but I'm thinking perhaps $30-40cdn/hour).
Self-employment (I'm hoping for a reasonable trade off between my current security, comfort and ease for a future that is more self-defined, fulfilling, varied and perhaps somewhat cash poor, at least for now).

Is handing out a business card with your blog on it obnoxious?

tozturk — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:08:47 -0800

Does anyone have their blog on their business card? Have you handed it out in an attempt at networking? What has the response been? Positive? Negative? (More Inside) Some background info:
In a few hours I'm going to be attending a Venture Fair with big investors and other generally important people from my city-area. This is not the first time I've attended such an event - it's about the 7th or 8th one I've been to in the past two years as a function of my "real" job.

I run a small blog about issues for my area and I have been debating making some business cards up with the blog listed as my job/other professional information.

I'm relatively young and still new at this whole "networking" thing - I've only come to really recently accept that it's a good thing. I wanted to give it a go at this event with the cards and I was wondering if it anyone else has done this with their blogs. I'm not looking for funding of any sort - but I am looking to raise the profile a little bit.

Any help/stories/guidance would be very much appreciated. Thanks

PayPal me my taxes.

Orkboi — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:14:14 -0800

I am running a free Web-based service for friends and acquaintances. Lately, the volume on this service has been growing greatly. The next step is to move the service to a professional host. I am thinking of putting a paypal donation button on the site to help pay for it. Are there any legal or tax issues I need to worry about? Do I need a business license? What if I want to start selling Cafe Press items or running Google ads? I am located in the USA.

Where should I advertise my new tech service site?

Mwongozi — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:30:14 -0800

I am the "neighbourhood geek" where I live, and so end up giving away a lot of free tech support. I am perfectly happy to do so, and now plan to start up my own web site where I dispense knowledge I have recently been asked for to the world. Kinda like "SlashDot... for dummies".
If the site gets sufficiently popular I may place some Google ads on it, but first I need to get my site "out there" and so I need to advertise, which I am willing to spend a few currency units on. I was going to use Google AdWords, but I'm really useless at picking keywords.
Are there better places to advertise, based on the target audience (non-geeks and wannabe-geeks) of my site?

What should I charge for web design work?

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:33:49 -0800

I am in Wisconsin and forming an agreement with a company interested in oursourcing some web design. I'd like to charge a flat fee per project. What is a fair percentage of the profit they make for me to ask for? 40%?

Small-business Web Design

Hankins — Thu, 13 May 2004 07:57:53 -0800

When my company discusses web design service with potential clients, they generally *always* balk and get ornery about the cost. Most of the time, we're working for small businesses, so understandably, $5-$10k is a substantial chunk of change for people to shell out. We don't get upset when we lose bids for being too expensive because we've always been taught that compromising our rate is not the solution... you simply can't meet everyone's budget. That being said, we turn away enough people who expect websites to cost $500-$1500 that I think there might be a market supportive enough to create solutions for. [come inside, won'tcha?] That being said, we turn away enough people who expect websites to cost $500-$1500 that I think there might be a market supportive enough to create solutions for. The most important factor for us, however, is that it also be affordable for us to pursue as well, meaning minimizing deployment time and customer support issues (i.e. hand-holding).

In that light, we've thought about creating a template-based system that we could use to pop a company's logo in, change around the color scheme a bit, and add the site's text. We could then resort to a more "my nephew on geocities designs websites" tactic of charging for "website packages," like "4 pages, contact form, site statistics for $500," or "6 pages, news blog, contact form for $1000," etc.

As designers, we'd have to suck up our pride for not being able to put our custom design work to task, instead rolling out templates like a line-cook at Denny's, but I don't think we'd have a problem with that as long as it proved fruitful. Though perhaps preachy in perception, we fundamentally enjoy working with people and helping them solve their problems, so being able to help a wider audience without having to sacrifice our rent money is essentially the true nature of the beast. Additionally, it would allow us to improve our customer acquisition, which would benefit us in the long-term as well (selling to existing customers is easier than getting new customers).

Has anyone ventured into a similar pursuit? Would it be advisable to stick with the "less customers / higher-paying jobs" perspective, vs the "More customers / less-paying jobs?"

From a technical standpoint, can anyone recommend a good way to minimize the work at the development stage? I've thought about using MT and creating new blogs for each new client, but I don't know if that's overkill. Additionally, mambo & Typepad look like they would provide easier user interfaces for those unfamiliar to online publishing, but I'm not sure that either of these are the best for assembly-line site rollouts. Are there any CMS-like applications available to hosting providers that let them cross-sell web services along with hosting?

How to acquire clients for a new web design business focusing on Flash design?

banished — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:29:17 -0800

I want to start a web design business focusing primarily on Flash design, but I need some tips on how to acquire clients. [More Inside] It has always been a dream of mine to start my own web development firm, and I am finally going for it. I have tried freelance web sites such as rentacoder.com with little luck in the past. The few projects where my bid actually won were completed at hardly any profit, and did little more than to improve my résumé. My new strategy has been to seek partnerships with successful design firms, offering them 25% of the cost of any project I complete, simply for the referral (I will extend this offer to anyone, including the MeFi community, by the way). Although I have e-mailed a few dozen firms, I have received little response so far. One advantage I think I have is that I am willing to take on small projects that wouldn't be worthwhile for a larger firm. Projects in the $500.00 range are ideal, but I will take less just to get the work. Is all of this a waste of time? Are all of these jobs being shipped out to India and other places, or are there still ways to find work? How does one go about getting big name clients?

Moving Domain Hosts

dobbs — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:07:00 -0800

I've been asked to redesign a medium-sized corp (60 employees) web site. The current host is dreadful and I want to switch it to Dreamhost, who I use for all my small clients without problem. How will moving their web site/domain to a different host affect their email? [MI] I guess i'm not even sure what I'm asking... they have a networked office. When I move the site, do I then just create a pop3 account for each person, the same as I would for a small client or does the fact that they have a network affect this? Do I have to go through their IT dept? I don't mind asking stupid questions here but I think if I went to them with this question they'd think I wasn't capable of the job. Suggestions, or do I need more info before I'm able to properly ask this question?