Moving On Up To The Eastside
It isn’t quite a “deluxe apartment in the sky,” but Curvine has some new digs. We’re happy to announce we’ve recently relocated to a new office in downtown Bellevue. After 5 years in Lincoln Center in Bellevue, we’ve moved to Bellevue Commercial Plaza right in the heart of downtown Bellevue. Our new office has several advantages:
- Right next to the Bellevue Transit center. Several of our staff members are now taking the bus to work, which makes our company greener. There’s also some great restaurants within easy walking distance from our new space.
- Conference room. Our new office has a small conference room that accommodates 6. That’s perfect for meetings with clients to show off new Web site designs, or to pitch a project to a potential client.
- Room for expansion. If we need more space, there are plenty of bigger offices in our new building for us to expand into, when the time is right.
We’re still unpacking, but we’ll be looking forward to having clients come to visit in the next few weeks.
The End of Flash as We Know It
Posted by jason in business tips on November 9, 2011
The handwriting has been on the wall for the past year, but today’s it is official: Adobe is abandoning efforts to support Flash on mobile devices a Browser plug-in. This means that in the future, all Flash-only sites (like ours and many others — we’re already working on a new version of our site, are others?) will not work on any mobile devices.
To us, this isn’t a surprise — we’ve been advising clients to avoid Flash for most of this year. Even before this announcement, Flash sites didn’t work on Apple’s handheld devices. A few months ago, Microsoft announced that Flash wouldn’t work on future Microsoft tablets. And many Android devices that supported Flash didn’t have enough processing power to handle the sites well.
Flash will live on in certain PC-only Web sites and as a standalone program. Though, the era of Flash on Web sites is over.
Get Rich Quick!
Posted by jason in business tips on November 1, 2011
We get a lot of calls from folks that are starting businesses. Some have some unreasonable expectations that I figured I would share:
- When I start my business, people will start using my Web site without me having to do anything.
- There are some easy special things I can do to my Web site to attract a lot of new customers.
- I want to start the next Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist or eBay.
Web site Design by Committee
Posted by jason in Uncategorized on October 25, 2011
Question: What happens when you have a committee of people making a key design decision. Half want the color red, half want blue. What ultimately gets decided?
Answer: I’m not sure what the ultimate decision will be, but it is likely that a majority won’t be happy with whatever gets decided.
As Web site development professionals, we often are approached with committees of people who are tasked to make a Web site. Committees often operate on consensus, which requires most of the people to agree with a decision. This is a great approach for deciding what company to hire to make your Web site, but it often is not a good approach for actually making the Web site.
Take the above example. If you choose red, half of the group will be unhappy. If you choose blue, half will be unhappy. Try and compromise with purple and no one is happy. You’ve also likely exhausted your Web site developer in deciding all of this. Here are some tips to help to avoid “Web sites designed by committee:”
- Take the decision out of the committee: The best approach is for the committee to empower one person to be the decision maker. That person should be someone with good judgement who the committee can trust, but also someone who can stand up to individuals and help move the process along.
- Have a clear decision making process: Without clear rules, one person on your committee can derail the whole process. By agreeing to a procedure for making decisions at the beginning, it will help make sure that the process is kept on track.
- Start Phase 2 early: A Web site is something that grows with your organization. Committees often come up with new good ideas during the process. It is best to stay on the original project track, but to start a list of ideas to include in the next iteration.
More on Mobile
Posted by jason in business tips on September 14, 2011
We’re getting more questions from clients about Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. We last visited this topic back in March. A few things have changed since then so we’re revisiting mobile devices again today.
Do I need a mobile version of my Web site?
In many cases, no. Most Web sites work just fine on mobile devices with no alteration. Mobile devices using Apple iOS or Android use browsers based on Webkit, which also powers Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browser. There are exceptions: sites that use Flash will not work properly on many handheld devices.
When do I need a special Mobile version of your site?
In short, when you expect a sizable percentage of traffic from mobile visitors. Some examples would be restaurants, news sites and movie theaters. Businesses that expect visitors to purchase items from their site using a mobile device will need to do more — they will need to create a mobile shopping experience. But it is important to be realistic –few businesses at this time should expect a large number of mobile purchases.
Do I need an app?
Most smart phones allow users to install applications or apps for short. Apps make access to your business easier for your customers, but installing a program on their device may take extra time and space on their phone. To determine whether you need an app, pretend you are a customer — would you want to install this app on your phone? It may help to interview potential customers.
How important is an office location to a Web site development business?
I mostly focus on Web site development topics on this blog, but I’ll take a break from that this post so I can solicit some advice from the Internet community about an important business decision.
Our lease is up in December, and I’m considering whether to move offices. In case you’ve never been, we’re in an office just across the freeway from the core of downtown Bellevue. The office is fine. It meets our needs, which narrowly defined, are a space to fit our staff (4 people, with room for two more should we need the space). It has two private offices so I and my project manager can speak on the phone without disturbing others. There’s a conference room, but it is in another building and impractical to use.
The building’s location is good — just off the freeway. Appearance wise, it doesn’t make the best impression. There is no elevator to our 2nd story office and the entrance is outside. We have clients by our office once or twice a month.
I’m looking at moving our office to a higher-rise building that makes a better first impression. I’m looking in downtown Bellevue. Rents are a lot more expensive, but perhaps the office’s location and appearance might attract more clients. What do you think? Should we stay or go?
Are 99 designs and other Crowdsourcing Web sites a good idea to use?
Posted by jason in Uncategorized on May 31, 2011
Crowdsourcing Web sites are all of the rage right now. Many people say they are a quick and easy way to get design work done at a minimal cost. Should companies use them for design work?
You would imagine that as at the owner of a Seattle-based Web site development firm, I wouldn’t suggest these cheaper options. You would be right, of course. However, I think it is important to know what these sites are good for:
- Quantity: These sites can produce a large amount of material for you to review.
- Speed: They produce this large amount of material in a small amount of time.
- Cost: They do all of the above on a very small budget.
A lot, Fast, and Cheap. What could go wrong? As I mentioned above, we’re biased against these sites as you might think that we compete against them. So rather than take my opinion, you could take Slate.com’s Rob Walker’s opinion. He commissioned a newsletter logo using Crowdspring.com. He paid $350 and got 32 submissions from 22 designers in one week. He consulted design experts and Slate’s own art department for feedback on what was sent. Here’s what he and his experts wrote:
“Nothing remarkable, nothing with charisma or stature or intellect or wit.”
Everything seemed “fine, and clean, and proper, without being right.”
I wouldn’t use CrowdSpring for a more serious design project—but I also wouldn’t have shelled out serious money for this one.
At one point, Walker mentions that a better design would have come from a more lengthy conversation between the client and the designer. I couldn’t agree more – great design comes from the back-and-forth process between the designer or design firm and the client.
What to Expect When You Are Expecting … A Lot of Visitors to your Web site
Posted by jason in business tips on April 7, 2011
We occasionally get phone calls from clients and potential clients who are expecting a lot of visitors to their Web site as a result of some national exposure. They have an article is a popular magazine, earned a mention on a popular TV show or are part of a national email campaign. This type of attention is usually what every small business aims for, but it is important to step back and make sure that your Web site can handle all of this attention. Some key questions to ask:
- Is your Web host ready? We recently reviewed a client’s Web hosting documentation and discovered this gem: “If for whatever reason your sites increased traffic causes problems for the server it may be necessary for the support department to ‘throttle’ your site … or possible (sic) even disable it.” Yikes. I wouldn’t want that to happen on the day of my national debut. Make sure your Web hosting is an environment which will be ready to handle all of that traffic. Check in with your Web hosting company and be sure you are on a Web hosting plan that can accommodate your needs.
- Have you tested? There are various tools available for simulating large numbers of simultaneous users — they are called Web site load testing tools. None of these are perfect, but they should give you a general idea of what you can handle. Make sure this testing any actions necessary to improve things are completed before the big day.
- Have an estimate. Although your business has never had national exposure before, you have had more limited attention. Try to make some educated guesses based on your previous experience. A local ad campaign, which reaches 2,000 people, netted 10 orders in 1 day. A national campaign, which reaches 200,000 people might net 1,000 in one day. It isn’t important that these numbers are 100% accurate — even if they aren’t, they will give you an estimate to plan for.
Good luck on your big day!
Apple’s iPhone: How does it effect your Web site?
Posted by jason in business tips on March 31, 2011
There’s a lot of buzz about mobile devices accessing company Web sites nowadays. We get a lot of questions about whether our work is compatible with browsers on mobile devices (for the most part, it is). Almost all of the questions we get are about the iPhone.
It is important to know the facts about mobile browser usage in the real world. Perception does’t match the reality of today’s mobile environment:
- Even though almost all questions we get about mobile browsers involve the iPhone, most smart phones sold today aren’t actually iPhones. According to tech firm, Canalys, the top operating system on smart phones in Quarter 3 of last year was actually Google’s Android operating system with 44% market share. Apple’s iPhone is almost tied for 2nd place with RIM’s Blackberry, both at rough 25%. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was far behind at 3% (though, they released a new version in quarter 4 which probably increased market share).
- Even though almost every one is asking about them, mobile phones make up a very small amount of web traffic on corporate Web sites. 2-3% of traffic is normal. While it is growing, that small number makes mobile not a huge concern for most business owners. There are exceptions: news, sports and information get more traffic from phones. But lawyers, doctors, product retailers and most other sites will stay in the 2-3% range for a while longer.
- Most Web sites automatically work on mobile phones without changes. That’s because Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone Web Browsers use “webkit,” which is the basis for Apple’s Safari Web Browser and Google’s Chrome Web Browser. For the most part, things that work on those browsers work on the phones too. There is one major exception: Adobe’s Flash — which is used for animations and videos — doesn’t work on the iPhone and some Android phones. The Android issue will be resolved over time as phones get upgraded or replaced, the iPhone issue is the result of a squabble between Apple and Adobe and doesn’t look set to change anytime soon. So for videos and animations to work on the iPhone, they have to be recoded.
We hope that helps. What other mobile questions do you have?
Is Outsourcing Web site development work a good idea?
Posted by jason in business tips, Curvine on January 26, 2011
In a piece about Boeing on the popular online magazine Slate summed up outsourcing work to foreign countries in one pithy sentence.
Outsourcing might be a cheaper route, but not if those savings are eaten up by timeline and cost overruns to fix mistakes made by overseas workers due to a lower skill levels or miscommunication.
At Curvine, most of our work is done in our office or with local designers & programmers who we can meet face to face. We have experimented with using folks from out of the country on specific projects. While the hourly rate is lower, the work takes longer both in terms of time to completion and billable hours. There are language barriers and quality of work issues which have to be solved. It isn’t that you can’t solve these problems (in fact, we have had one longterm HTML producer who has been the exception to this rule), it is just that it isn’t automatic and some or most of the cost savings is lost to these issues.
When do you think outsourcing to a foreign country is right? When is it not right?
About Curvine
Every company has a Web site. But most business owners don't know how to make their Web site generate leads and sales. Our firm, Curvine Web Solutions -- a Web site development firm located in Bellevue, WA, creates strategies, designs and writes code to make your Web site make money for your business.
Please contact us at 425-818-9096 to ask for a free proposal. You can also visit our Web site at www.curvine.com