Lisa Loeb: aka The value of all night working sessions…

01-18-2008

If anyone ever tells you that you can’t get a full multimedia-based website up in a week, they’re lying. It doesn’t, however, necessarily mean that you SHOULD, and if it happens often enough, you will die of exhaustion, your family will leave you, and you will lead a hopeless shell of an existence.

I can now unveil the new Lisa Loeb site, which is still very much imperfect (we are still adding archived content, as well as more music, videos and the store), but I am nonetheless proud of. The domains are propagating as we speak, just as Lisa prepares for her appearance on my not-so-secret-crush’s show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

I wanted to get the site up and live to take advantage of the inevitable traffic spike after a TV Appearance, plus we have a new CD coming out next week as well… so, I am excited, I am delirious with exhaustion, and I am so out of whack with my work/life balance right now it is insane.

But, it’s worth it.

And, if anyone else asks me to deliver a WHOLE JOOMLA SITE delivered in a week or 2, please, in the nicest possible way, take that cactus over there and please shove it up your rear. Twice. :)

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Go check out www.lisaloeb.com when the domain is working, and buy The Purple Tape on CD. And, if you don’t click on the visuals link and look at the videos and appreciate my work, I will personally come and kill you and your children and your children’s children, because that was a pain in the arse.
:)

You Get What You Pay For…

01-13-2008

I have found that people can be surprised when quoted our price for web design, but the simple matter is that our services are worked out at $100.00 an hour which is, more or less, an industry standard. Web design, and then redesign, can greatly increase the price when you take in the fact that a page design, by itself, can take eight hours or more to create. Add together coding and all the other bells and whistles that make up a unique site and you have your price.

In the end you get a site, tailored to you and your business, which is unique. Your site becomes your front line in marketing your business and can generate you thousands upon thousand of dollars over the life of the site. Is that not worth paying for?

Two web sites, both belonging to design companies, were sent to me this morning that really show that you get what you pay for. One is in English and the other is German but both could be one and the same. The both want your business and both are cheaper than LinkArtist Multimedia, way cheaper.

I’ll talk mostly about the one in English as I can read their site but it’s not that hard to navigate the German site for reasons I will point out.

OK, example 1. Joyvill Inc.

On first impressions, Joyvill’s site is nice and clean. It’s jam packed full of all those buzz word that you expect to find from some of our competitors. Straight away you know where they are located and that they know what Search Engine Optimizations is.

The front page then goes on to things you should already expect, like a site that will impress your competition and your clients will be able to use. Would you expect anything else?

OK so sounds pretty good huh? A cheap easy to use, pretty site from a ‘Web Design’ company! Where do I sign? Not so fast!

Example 2 Design Bits

Have you clicked on the link yet? Notice anything? I’ll make it easier.

joyville

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Kinda similar huh! There is a reason for this. They use templates for their ‘design’. Both sites come from the same template then are populated with content specific to their own site. If I had a template to use, I’m pretty sure that I could knock up that site in five hours or so. Five times $100.00 equals $500.00 not ‘from $1600.00′! So it’s easy to see where the profit is.

But what if both businesses are connected and or owned by the same group? I did consider that and it could be true. Instead I took a look at their previous work. Now using what you know about internet templates, do you see any similarities?

Basically it comes down to this. You get what you pay for. If you like what these guys are selling then how about this.

1. Go to Template Monster , Free Site Templates or one of the many other thousands of template sites on the net.

2. Pay between $25 and $65 for a basic template.

3. Using Google or any other search engine to hunt out step by step information you need to upload and populate your very own site!

4. Enjoy. Just don’t worry when you see a copy of your site somewhere else.

Quality Vs Quantity

01-03-2008

I spend Christmas week sick with tonsillitis. It was so bad that I didn’t manage to eat anything for 5 day and missed out on the best thing of Christmas, the food! Finally, just before 7PM on Boxing Day I let Téa take me to an after hours GP, 20 minutes from our house.

The service at the after hours GP was great! We didn’t need an appointment and there was only 3 people waiting ahead of us. We waited about 40 minutes to been seen and the quality of the Doctor was amazing. She actually cared about me and the rest of the family. She checked everybody out to make sure they weren’t as sick as me and then she gave me a booster injection of antibiotics for no extra charge because the pills she prescribed wouldn’t take effect for a day or two! The visit cost more then my regular GP but I’m sure I would have paid double for it!

Compare that to my regular GP.

Téa, feeling sick herself, tried to make an appointment at our regular Doctors the day after. Firstly she was told that she would have to wait three days (She never went to the Dr’s because by the time the 3 days were up she felt good enough to not go!). Secondly if she had gone she would have been met with a challenge like this.

Our local GP has about 12 Dr’s names on the front of the building but there are only ever 2 or 3 there. Even though you have an appointment that you have been waiting for for days you are still made to wait for upwards of an hour! It’s easy to sit down in the waiting room and think that even though there are 30 people waiting there are so many Dr’s that you wont be waiting to long. It’s not till you notice that only 3 Dr’s ever come out, calling patients names, that you realize that everybody is there to see the same Dr as you!

Finally you get to see your Dr and he has exactly 2 minutes with you which he spends thinking about something or someone else! Its rushed beyond belief.

At the end you pay almost as much as if you went to the after hours GP but you have this feeling that something was lacking. Service and consideration maybe?

I remember when I was talking to the after hours GP she said that she would send her report to my regular GP. Well I don’t think I want my regular GP! I want the after hours GP as my regular GP!