The Confluent Forms blog

Helping businesses, and individuals, make the most out of Blogger

2012-05-14T16:28:00.000-04:00

You might have noticed that we've been doing a lot of work that uses Blogger, creating sites for small and medium sized businesses and non-profits that take advantage of the Blogger platform while creating beautiful, engaging, and search engine friendly websites.

With this in mind we wanted to give back to the Blogger community by helping others with their Blogger sites through the support forums, and we've begun a blog entitled BlogXpertise that features tips and tricks for enhancing a Blogger website.

But also, starting this Tuesday, May 15th at 2pm EST, we're going to be presenting with Lisa Ding, Community Manager for Blogger, how you can use Blogger for your business! Come join us, give Hangout On Air a try, and ask any questions you might have about how and why you should be using Blogger for your business or non-profit organization's website.

Website redesign launch of Concentrics Restaurants!

2012-05-03T10:00:00.000-04:00

This week we're proud to announce the launch of the website redesign for Concentrics Restaurants!

Partnering with BoyBurnsBarn LLC, we've created a number of websites for Concentrics' restaurants this year including Prato, Luma on Park, and Central, and late last year we were given the green light to redesign the parent company's website. On this website we really wanted to show off.

Welcome to Concentrics Restaurants

Case studies designed like a 1-page magazine feature

Interactive listing of restaurants generated by a Google Doc spreadsheet

Dynamically generated portfolio slideshows, easily content managed

Booking form using Google Docs, submitting to a spreadsheet, and automatically notifying the staff

As we've mentioned in previous articles, building business websites on Blogger and in the "Google-verse" has quite a few benefits. This site is by far our most envelope-pushing Blogger site, and even if you don't care what is running the site, we believe it to also be one of our most beautiful, content-rich, and interactive sites. But if you go beyond that, it also has free hosting, a built-in blogging functionality, search engine optimization benefits, and much more. You can learn more about the benefits in our articles "A website solution for a tough economy" and "You can do some amazing things with Blogger".

What should my website redesign cost?

2012-04-10T09:35:00.000-04:00

We get asked how much a website should cost at least once a week. It can be by friends, friends of friends, business connections, anyone really. When they learn what we do for a living, they invariably ask us "what should my website cost?"

If only it were easy to give a good answer.

The fields of web design and web development are filled with a wide spectrum of professionals, hobbyists, students, freelancers and outsourcing firms around the globe. Web design projects can also vary, beginning at a few simple pages in a "brochure" website to complex websites that have a content management system, e-commerce, and interactive features. Some projects can be completed using open source free download packages, template projects based on work already done such as "choose from one of these existing designs", application service providers using ready-to-go packages, or work custom designed and developed for you.

And these are only some of the variables that contribute to the pricing. We won't even get into fixed price or estimate pricing or subjective variables such as the interest level of the project and whether the firm is desperate for new business, not to mention the grossly unqualified or the bait and switch prices. We once saw a firm bid $500 to make a complete banking website with the ability to do everything a banking website should be able to do... We've also seen companies charge over $1 million, have a team of 50, and deliver a basic 5 page website after over a year of process. In this industry everything and anything is possible and logic can often be thrown out of the window in regard to pricing.

What will your website do for you?

Determinations on how much you should spend on your site should take into consideration what you are anticipating in terms of Return On Investment (ROI). If your website is your primary sales and marketing piece and the way that most people find information about your company it makes sense to spend more on the site since it has more value to your company's bottom line.

Other returns on your investment could be in the form of:

saved time and resources by accepting information through the website
saved money on printing and shipping materials by placing digital copies of those materials on the website
increased productivity
social marketing and collaborative ventures
anything else that you want to accomplish through your website that contributes to your organization

The value you derive from your website and its contribution to your mission should have a direct correlation to the amount of money you're willing to spend on your site.

Be prepared to spend what you're willing to spend

Your website can cost whatever you're willing to spend on it but you should limit the budget based on your above ROI determinations. It can range from looking like a bad ad in the yellow pages to the greatest marketing piece you've ever seen. It can be one page or dozens of pages, it can be hard-coded or it can have an easy to use Content Management System integrated with it, and it can be flat or it can be interactive.

Obviously the more unique, the more functional, and the more interactive the more expensive the project, but good and unique graphic design is also an expense to factor into the equation. In much the same way that two girls won't be caught dead in the same prom dress, do you really want your website to look identical to a competitor's website? Distinguishing yourself costs money.

Deciding the budget for your project should be an allocated part of your overall technology, marketing, advertising, and operating budget and not a one-off expenditure. If you haven't established a technology budget or determined how technology fits within your strategic plan you should consider hiring a Virtual CTO, and if you're ready to start getting quotes, we recommend our primer on how to select the right web design and development company.

Don't spend it all in one place

As we've mentioned in our last article, your web project doesn't stop at the launch of your new site, but there are also a number of incidentals that you need to consider such as hosting, maintenance and upkeep... and keeping the site fresh with content and functionality that continues to advance the goals of your site.

Keep some money in reserve and plan for the future beyond the site release.

Our EU Innovation delegation visit to Washington

2012-03-14T09:40:00.000-04:00

In January, I (David) was invited to Washington DC to meet with the UK's Technology Strategy Board and a delegation of EU member states at the British Embassy. The focus of their meeting: striving to improve innovation support in Europe for Small and Medium-sized businesses. In particular they were seeking out best practices in innovation, and regarding us, innovation in procurement. The group included representatives from six European innovation agencies: Enterprise Ireland (Ireland), FFG (Austria), Agentschap (Netherlands), Tekes (Finland), Technology Strategy Board (UK) and VINNOVA (Sweden).

Why were we invited to meet with this esteemed group from across the pond? It seems that the RFP Database had caught their attention. Our site's ability to harness the collective efforts of over 100,000 registered users to create a dynamic information gathering and information providing portal, within the procurement space, was something they wanted to learn more about. They wanted to know more about how the system operated, what we've learned from it in terms of what has worked and what hasn't worked, and what effects it has had on both the issuers of RFPs found in our system as well as the vendors that download the RFPs. It was a pleasure meeting with such an interesting group and getting a chance to discuss our site with them, but also perhaps have some impact on their own project(s).

During the course of the meeting one topic kept coming back: how can government organizations encourage innovation in small and medium sized businesses?

The typical way that bureaucrats respond to this question is by simply giving money away through "innovation grants", which can be found through Grants.gov, and totaling approximately $500 billion in annual awards.

I think we can do better. I believe that governments of all sizes (federal, state and local) can best encourage innovation by demanding innovation in their purchasing.

Government spending in 2010 totaled approximately $5.8 trillion, or ~12x the amount awarded through grants. The vast majority of that money is spent purchasing products and services, primarily with the goal of procuring a solution that will accomplish the task while costing the least. Check the requirement boxes, submit a fixed or hourly rate that is $1 less than your competitor, and you have a race to the bottom of the barrel. There's a great acronym for this: TALP (Technically Acceptable, Lowest Price).

The only thing "innovative" about this is figuring out how low you can go with your pricing or how you can outsource more of your work in order to lower your pricing even more. This often doesn't encourage innovation, but instead encourages shipping work overseas, which frequently leads to a lower quality deliverable.

In the interest of pitching an idea (and not simply complaining), I've written out the following process; the goals of the process are to a) lessen the amount of paperwork and non-billable time investment in order to continually bid on vague RFPs, b) reduce the barriers for entry (liability insurance, proof of, etc.), c) bring outside experts in to the procurement process in order to encourage innovative solutions.

Open Innovation Sourcing model

Percentage of contracts identified or targeted through open voting as "ripe" for innovation
Agency defines the problem(s) and goal(s)
Agency issues a RFQ, selects 3-5 vendors to become collaborators based on their project pitch and examples of innovative solutions to related problems (a stipend position). At least one vendor must be new to government procurement.
Each collaborator is tasked with participation in creative sessions to create an innovation solution to the problem and define the solution. Solutions are peer critiqued with multiple rounds of revisions, then graded by the procurement officer on projected savings (both short and long term), force multiplying affect, and support for small/medium sized businesses
Based on the definition, a RFP is released to implement the defined solution

This solution does not tear down the concept of RFPs, nor does it rely on the input of just one vendor, but instead encourages creative competition in a paid process. In a sense it is "crowd sourcing", but on a limited and focused scale so as to keep the project moving along (avoiding too many cooks in the kitchen) and will be paid (not a competition, but instead compensated expertise).

Do you think this will lower costs, encourage government innovation, and provide opportunities to more small and medium-sized businesses? I'm eager to hear your thoughts!

The RFPdb has opened its archives of old RFPs to everyone, for free

2012-03-13T12:10:00.000-04:00

Confluent Forms LLC, owners of the RFP Database, are proud to announce that we have opened our archive of expired RFPs to the public, without credits or even an account being required.

If you are searching for historical RFPs, or examples of RFPs to use in creating your own RFP, you now have free access to approximately 66,000 Requests for Proposals. Some old RFPs that consisted of a link to the originating source might not work (they could have been removed from their site), but there are tens of thousands that will work that include the original RFP file(s).

Our goal in making this database repository public is to aid in the creation of new Requests for Proposals. RFP authors will now have access to dozens of RFPs that are similar to the RFP they're preparing to issue, can learn about best practices by evaluating other RFPs, and if so inclined, can reach out to the issuers to find out how their RFP process progressed and if there were any updates the original author would now make in retrospect.

It is our hope that by providing this data we will aid in the advancement of Requests for Proposals "Best Practices" and more efficient procurement practices.

Confluent Forms' articles on Requests for Proposals can be found here.

About Confluent Forms LLC:

Confluent Forms LLC is a boutique branding, graphic design, web design and custom software development firm based in Northampton, MA. Incorporated in January of 2002, Confluent Forms has provided technology consulting, branding, graphic design, web design, PHP and MySQL development, Web 2.0 software development, application development and hosting services to customers from the Fortune 100 to local non-profit organizations, startup businesses and academic institutions.

For More Information:

David Kutcher
President
Confluent Forms LLC
+1-413-303-9612
info@confluentforms.com
http://www.confluentforms.com

The World isn't quite flat; use your location to your advantage

2011-12-15T15:35:00.000-05:00

Globalization isn't a force to be reckoned with. As the World has shrunk in size due to the lowered cost of shipping, the Internet, and formerly 3rd world countries investing in their infrastructure, suddenly companies no longer joust with just their local competition, but are pitted against firms in Argentina, Indian, Mexico, China, Lithuania, etc., where the labor is significantly cheaper for a variety of reasons. Outsourcing, whether it be manufacturing, software development, call centers or even tax form processing, has been the rage for the last decade. Writers such as Thomas Friedman have expounded on this phenomenon at length, and most authors on the subject have a philosophical/socio-political agenda such as the evolution of US labor laws, the enforcement of WTO labor laws in our trading partners, the idea that the US has to retain its status as the knowledge leader in emerging technologies, or other issues of the day.

If you tuned into this conversation you'd assume the future of being a business in the US, and especially in the manufacturing and technology sectors, was all doom and gloom. How can you compete against firms that will do the same work as you for a fraction of the cost? With localization technologies, suddenly that Indian firm that charges rates 1/2 of yours is too close for comfort. Do you cut rates? Do you yourself start outsourcing more of your work to those inexpensive labor markets? Do you pick up and move to India?

Start by being a Buy Local proponent

"Buy Local" is a big theme here in Western Massachusetts, and has become a rallying-cry that could be said to have advanced (or even saved) sustainable agriculture in the Pioneer Valley. Buying "Local First" also propagates the idea that the cost savings by going abroad for products or services are outweighed by the secondary benefits of buying local and supporting businesses in your community.

To paraphrase their great list:

Significantly more money re-circulates in the community

Non-profits and charities receive greater support

Unique businesses contribute to the local character of the area

Environmental impact, locally and beyond, is reduced

Small businesses, and locally-owned businesses, contribute more jobs to the economy

Customer service is often better

Local business owners invest in the community that they are members of

Create a greater tax base to support local services

Added competition and diversity lead to more consumer choices

Entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character

These same ideas apply equally whether you are a general consumer or in business procurement; spending money in your immediate area fosters a strong, vibrant, and local business community, one that you can turn to for procurement sources as well as customers.

The importance of communication, face time, and local connections

One of the biggest selling points for choosing a local vendor is the amount of face time you'll likely receive, face time that will keep the vendor honest, enable greater chances of success through increased communication (and not just via email or phone), and enable the project to more easily adjust if changes are needed. The majority of software development projects fail; the reason most often cited is poor communication. While face time isn't the cure-all for all technology projects, or projects in general, it can often be a salve, enabling you to quickly move past problems and on to solutions.

Creating lasting bonds with local vendors establishes more than just a buyer/seller relationship, but can develop a relationship where you are a trusted advisor and long-term partner. Think of this as less blind sales pitches and greater business development efforts.

More than anything else, creating a local partner can create a positive buzz for you within your area. Relationships matter and within a community referrals can be worth their weight in gold. So instead of being another nameless entity become a trusted face. Buy local and locals will buy from you.

Bakery Normand, a Blog of Note!

2011-10-12T13:35:00.004-04:00

Since moving into our location in downtown Northampton we've become huge fans of and friends with the owners of Bakery Normand. This cute and friendly neighborhood bakery has been selling amazing breads, pastries, cookies, etc. for over 30 years... and until this past August, never had a website!

Working with the proprietors' son we undertook the creation of the bakery's website. The goals:

Provide store location and hours to customers
Tell the story of the bakery
List the products, product ingredients and baking days
Get peoples' mouths watering

And our own goal: to encourage Bob the Baker to start writing a cook book!

We weren't quite sure what to expect when we turned the site over to the baker; would he use it? Would the site stay with just the first article? Would he start blogging?

Within the first 2 weeks the Bakery posted 4 articles, wrote content for all of the web pages, added a few web pages, and posted photographs for almost every product they make.

Today Bakery Normand was featured as a Blogger "Blog of Note"; we couldn't be more proud.

A website solution for a tough economy

2011-09-27T15:00:00.009-04:00

Our company headquarters is in Northampton, Massachusetts, a town with a very strong culture of "buy local" ingrained in the social fabric. Walking down Main Street you can count on one hand the number of chain stores found here and the local banks greatly outnumber the Big Bank entities. Small businesses dominate.

But in this tight economy, how does a small business that can't or won't "deep discount" compete against the large online retailers? How can they keep their existing customers motivated without slashing their prices, let alone grow?

Flash-back to a year ago: we had very few local clients. Importantly, we didn't have what we felt was a compelling strategy and package to sell to these small businesses that would make sense for us or for them. A more affordable "static" 5-page website just wasn't appealing. We asked ourselves: what product could we develop and offer, within a reasonable budget, that their existing site didn't fulfill?

The strategy to answer this question didn't begin to form until our first client project using Blogger, a makeover of Pinch Gallery's website. This website became the "missing piece of the puzzle" for continually engaging customers and fans of Pinch, creating new fans (and customers!) of the store through showcasing new artists and their beautiful work, and driving visitors to become Facebook fans or newsletter subscribers. The initiative behind the project was "how can we keep Pinch in front of them so that they're going to come in to see our new products".

We decided to keep the site in Blogger and to experiment in going beyond perceived barriers of what could be accomplished in the Blogger system.

Some quick statistics for Pinch over the last year have included at 4x increase in the number of Facebook fans, a 13x increase in the number of monthly active users, and a 5x increase in average monthly traffic to the website. This increased website traffic and customer interest encouraged Pinch to explore opening an online store which went live in July and has been a success, especially among the fans of Pinch who live outside of the Valley, but also in capturing new customers who happen to find the products through search engines.

How can we keep our customers and fans engaged and thinking about our business?

That question has driven each of the local, small business websites that we have developed since launching Pinch's site. That question yields different results for different projects.

For Ode (a women's clothing boutique), that question yielded the "Inspiration Board", using blog functionality for style/beauty articles, look books, inspiration photos, Arts Night Out event notices, and articles about their monthly philanthropy. We've also added a page "Where has your Ode bag been?" showcasing photographs submitted by customers of places that they've taken their Ode bag, around the Valley and around the world.

For Impish (children's clothing and gear), we decided that expanding on their focus of "selection" by enabling them to publish product spotlights and reviews was the perfect way to go. Publishing these articles accomplishes a goal trifecta of 1) showcasing products to customers/fans that might never have considered them, 2) establishes Impish as a trusted vendor with expertise, and 3) increases search engine rankings to drive new visitors to the site.

And for Bakery Normand, what is a better enticement to visit a bakery than mouth-watering photographs of pastries? The Bakery waited until 2011 to have a website, and since the website has launched, they have jumped right in and begun using it to the fullest. They've written articles about new seasonal offerings, communicated their ordering schedule for holiday products, and thrown in some philosophical pieces that you know the baker was mulling over as he waited for the bread to rise.

Writing the articles is the first part of the strategy of engagement, the second part is tying those articles in to the other forms of media and methods that your fans and customers use to keep in touch. For some people that takes the form of a newsletter signup (Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or even Feedburner for blog updates), some become Facebook fans, and others might want to follow you on Twitter. There are ways to automate your publishing from your website/blog to all of these services, simplifying the process for you, leaving you to the real task of sitting down and writing. You don't want to clutter your page with too many social media outlets, but choosing the most popular, and giving the options that make the most sense for you and your customers, will help you keep connected.

The third part happens because of the content you've written and distributed through the social media landscape: search engine results! Search engines love fresh content and they will reward the site with new inbound traffic. Each new article that is written contains keywords and phrases that help it get found for more and more search queries. More content, good content, and lots of generated returning links from 3rd party sites to the website will place the site higher and higher in targeted searches. This search engine strategy is one that can be practiced without needing to hire a search engine marketer or search engine "optimizer" to artificially inflate the site's search engine standings. By the website owners publishing the content that has been made an integral part of their website, their search engine marketing happens organically..

The technical solution

All of the projects mentioned above use the Blogger platform for their website, taking advantage of the largest blogging service to create content-rich websites with custom branding and design. We've found that we can do amazing things with Blogger, and the platform adds a number of competitive advantages that make it more than ideal for offering this small-business-friendly website solution.

How are YOU keeping your customers and fans engaged and thinking about your business?

If you're interested in discussing a new strategy for your company's website, and the ideas above have given you some ideas for how you can use content publishing to retain, engage, and grow your customer base, please give us a call at 413-303-9612 or email us at info@confluentforms.com

You can do some amazing things with Blogger

2011-07-28T14:30:00.007-04:00

Confluent Forms LLC specializes in creating gorgeous, engaging websites with custom content management systems (CMS, software that enables easy management of your website content without a web developer), but we’ve found that Blogger can be a great platform for web development when a custom CMS isn’t needed. Blogger provides a ton of functionality and design freedom for our clients, and not just for blogs!

I know - unexpected, right? Using blog software for a website?

Concentrics Restaurants

(to be really amazed, read about our latest site launch or visit it at Concentrics Restaurants)

I think that most users do not realize the value and flexibility that Blogger offers, including free hosting, complete customization, personalized domain options, WYSIWYG editor and more. Because Blogger is a Google product, you can also easily integrate with other Google services such as: Google Analytics, Google Docs, AdSense, Picasa and more. All of this is available free of charge while providing a simple, easy authoring environment for the small business owner.

As a web development firm, Blogger provides us with a different value proposition.

When I pitch a Blogger-based solution to a client:

I can provide my company’s services to customers at a lower price point while maintaining full creative freedom and giving them a basic but user-friendly CMS
I don’t need to set up a paid hosting account for my client (avoiding the associated headaches)
I don’t need to worry, or have the client worry, about security patches or upgrades
I don’t have to be concerned about uptime and availability
I can show the client drafts while we develop by keeping the site invitation-only until it is ready to go public
I can easily transfer ownership and management of the site to my client or keep us both as co-administrators

It can be hard to envision a platform’s potential from a list of features and value propositions, so here are some examples of websites Confluent Forms has done recently for a number of business. I’ll highlight the unique aspects of them from a Blogger standpoint as we go.

1) Luma on Park

Luma on Park, Winter Park FL

Websites built in Flash have their time and place, but when you have a restaurant that wants to continually update their site with new content, have it accessible through mobile devices like the iPhone, and take advantage of search engines, it’s time to find a different solution. But can you make a site as beautiful and as interesting as a Flash site and build it in Blogger? Sometimes clients don’t want to know what the solution is under the hood, they just want the site to look great, work great, and be simple for them to update when they need to make changes. They don’t want to feel that they’re being constrained by something (like a CMS) that they don’t really understand, but they want all of the advantages that it provides.

Yes, this site is a Blogger website. This site takes advantage of JQuery, an advanced Javascript library, for the backbone of the bells and whistles. You can integrate JQuery and other Javascript libraries (MooTools, Prototype, script.aculo.us, etc.) into your blog, and Google even provides them via the Google Libraries API! The site also pays particular attention to all of the different widgets and includes that Blogger provides within the site, from the “read more” links to social media buttons. Crafting these items, and changing them from the defaults, was a matter of identifying them (the Chrome browser’s “Inspect Element” functionality was extremely useful) then customizing them in the CSS or in the “Expand Widget Templates” of the Blogger “Edit HTML” page.

In the words of our designer,

“It’s a fully functioning site of which no design limitations were encountered. Its content is fully editable by a client who is running multi-faceted business with little technical experience. As the graphic designer using Blogger in this way is liberating. For my clients it’s empowering.“

2) Pinch Gallery

Pinch Gallery, Northampton MA

Pinch was our first foray into delivering a custom site using Blogger. Our goals for the project were to create a platform that would enable this small town gallery to showcase new artists whose work they carry, engage the dedicated fans of the gallery with updates, and empower the owner of the gallery to easily keep her site fun, fresh, and beautiful with a fully branded presence. All of the content on each and every page within the site is easily updated by Pinch’s owner without needing to know anything about programming.

While still technically a blog, we think this site is unique in layout, design, branding, and organization. Parts of the site required extra customization - the product category landing pages and the change in layout from the homepage template to the interior page template to the categories page template (such as “Ceramics” in the header). To change the layout we used Blogger’s native if/else functionality combined with the ability to determine page types, and to accomplish the category page design we wrote a script to locate the first image in the article and display it as the thumbnail.

3) Renew Pilates Studio

Renew Pilates, Easthampton MA

Renew Pilates Studio is a Blogger site that doesn’t look or act like a blog. In fact, looking at the site, you’d probably never guess that it was in Blogger. The site takes advantage of the static pages functionality for the content pages and fills in the “news & events” section with blog posts. The underlying code of the site notes the page you’re viewing and changes the CSS rules accordingly, setting the correct background image for that page as well as the navigation indents.

Confluent Forms designed a custom form for the Contact Us page submission that uses Google Docs, submits user-supplied information to a Google Docs Spreadsheet from a custom form, and notifies the owners when a visitor has filled out the Contact Us form. By extracting the resulting HTML from the form, we could then embed and restyle the form to match the page design, and using a bit of Javascript, create a post-submission redirect to a thank you page. And using Google Calendar, the studio is able to create a class schedule in an easy to read format that interested students can then add to their own Google Calendars. Students now have an up-to-date class calendar available to them 24/7 - no reprints or web-site checks involved.

4) Impish

Impish, Northampton MA

When you’re a small retailer of children’s products like strollers, cribs, car seats, clothing and feeding products, it’s not enough that you simply sell the products, you need to be experts in the products. This site could have stopped at a simple 5 page brochure website, but instead Impish will be taking advantage of the integrated blog to educate their customers with product reviews, provide them with information about topics related to their business and industry, and update them to new products and specials that they’ll be offering. We’re also using Google Docs to enable Impish to collaborate with their expecting families and create gift registries which will then be listed and shared through the site. The store and the expecting parents will be able to update the registry document while visitors from the website will only be able to view the most recent version of the document.

5) Ode Boutique

Ode Boutique, Northampton MA

Ode already had a website when we started working with them, but after discussing web strategy, we decided the best thing we could do would be to move it to Blogger. Why? It made managing the website so much easier for a business owner that didn’t have the time to dedicate to learning a more complicated and less intuitive platform. We wanted to keep the minimalist fashion motif going, and wanted to add to that by enabling their design consultants to create newsletters and fashion columns.

Wondering about those wonderful slideshows? We took the standard LinkList widget provided by Blogger and turned it into a slideshow manager. The “link” in the link list is the direct link to the photograph in Picasa (Google’s photo management service) and the “name” in the link list is the optional caption. We used the Protoculous javascript library for the fade in/out functionality, but could easily have used any other Javascript if we had a preference. Sure, it takes a little bit more time to manage than simply embedding a Picasa sideshow, but our client is able to easily add or remove images and change their ordering, and from the design standpoint, we’re able to customize how it fits within the pages, add transition effects, auto-start and auto-loop. And with Google’s Web Fonts we were able to find a non-native font in the site to match the company’s logo type treatment for use in the website.

* * *

I hope the examples above have opened your eyes to some of the possibilities of what you can do with your Blogger site or maybe encourage you to give Blogger a try for your website solution. My company is lucky to have an exceptionally talented designer that isn’t afraid to push us, but even if you don’t have the ability to create an entirely new site template, perhaps this will encourage you to explore the underlying code of your site and to customize some of the small details to match your vision for your site.

Job Search Made Easier, Cheaper Through Crowd-Sourcing

2011-07-18T08:30:00.006-04:00

Innovative RFP Database Offers 100,000 Users $Billions in Project Opportunities

Northampton, MA, July 18, 2011 – Five years ago, entrepreneur David Kutcher got sick of searching fruitlessly for Requests for Proposal (RFP) to respond to. He knew that hundreds of thousands of other vendors were also wasting valuable time and energy looking for RFPs, while at the same time, organizations releasing RFPs were getting far too few responses to make bidding competitive. To solve this problem, his company created the RFP Database (RFPdb). Based on crowd-sourcing model, the RFPdb supports both RFP issuers and their respondents, and more and more businesses, government agencies, and non-profits are turning to it as a key resource. In fact, last week the site reached a landmark 100,000 registered users, outpacing all competitors in the field.

Initially, Kutcher seeded the site with RFPs he turned up in his own search for work, but couldn’t bid on himself. To encourage others to do the same, his business partner, Tom Leen, came up with a clever credit system: Members who upload RFPs are rewarded with credits redeemable for full access to other proposals. For those with more money than time, credits can simply be purchased, and it costs just $2 to view a full RFP on the site; there are no registration or subscription fees.

With its low cost and innovative business model, the RFPdb has grown quickly and organically, with more members posting more RFPs, and the growing member base attracting ever more project owners to the site. “Because of our crowd-sourcing model,” says David Kutcher, the company’s founder, “the RFP Database is able to offer a steady stream of new projects for everything from accounting to web development.” The model is self-propagating, and membership is growing at a rate of over 2,000 new registrations per month.

The RFPdb offers listings in over 100 categories from both government agencies and the private sector, and is especially rich in opportunities in technology, construction, and PR and marketing. Its members include procurement managers from some 5,000 cities, towns, government agencies, and non-profits, as well as a host of other backgrounds, who together post an average of $5 billion in projects to the site every month.

“RFPs are the lifeblood of smaller companies but they’re often difficult to find. The RFPDB puts qualified, serious leads—organized logically by what our business does—right at our fingertips,” says Emily Corey, owner of Write On The Wind. “It’s an easy, affordable way to support business growth and development and there’s something new to explore every day.”

* * *

The RFP Database is a creation of Confluent Forms LLC, a web design and custom web-based software development firm headquartered in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. As a small business, Confluent Forms was frustrated by the choice of either scouring the internet for RFPs or paying hefty project lead fees, subscriptions, or commissions to gain access to projects they wanted to bid on. The RFP Database was its way of creating a sustainable marketplace to enable companies of all sizes to effectively find business leads and opportunities.

For more information about the RFP Database, visit www.rfpdb.com or contact David Kutcher, (413) 303-9612, david@confluentforms.com.

Press release.

Requests for Proposals (RFP), the Drinking Game

2011-03-08T10:16:00.013-05:00

Drink if/when*:

If this is your first time responding to a RFP

The RFP asks for liability insurance coverage exceeding 10x the amount of your project proposal

The RFP requests 5 or more years of financial statements
x2 if the RFP states that they'll be running a background check on your company and all of its employees

The RFP contains a legalese to project content ratio of greater than 5:1
x2 if the project content is only 1 page
x3 if the ratio is greater than 10:1

The RFP does not contain budget information
x2 if it contains budget information that is a small fraction of what you'd be pitching
x3 if it states that they don't have any money (at the moment), but need your proposal to raise capital
finish your drink if part or all of your project is expected to be done for free, for trade/barter, or for part equity

The RFP contains information that is clearly from a different project (architecture information in a web development project, etc.)
x2 was clearly copy/pasted from some other organization's RFP and includes their name

The RFP repeats the same question multiple times
x2 if it repeats the same question but with very slight variations
x3 if you respond by copy/pasting the same answer for each question

The RFP gives 2 weeks or less, from release of the RFP to due date

The RFP provides you with answers to your questions less than one week before the proposal is due
x2 if the RFP does not allow any communication with the issuer at all

The RFP is a poor scan image of a text document preventing you from copying information from it.

The RFP asks you to send a digital copy of your proposal by email, a copy on disc, AND multiple printed copies
x2 if it specifies how your proposal needs to be bound
x3 if the number of copies is 5 or more
finish your drink if the entire packet needs to be hand-delivered by someone in your company

The RFP asks you for bios of your entire company
x2 if it also states that your proposal can't be longer than a specified number of pages making it impossible to provide all of the bios
x3 if it asks for "all persons having a financial interest in the company, including shareholders, members, general or limited partner" and you're a publicly traded company

The RFP requires spec work
x2 if it also requires that you present your spec work in person
x3 if it requires your entire project team to be present at the presentation of the spec work

The RFP has conflicting information
x2 specifies two different due dates within the document

You begin working on the proposal only to realize after you've spent a number of hours that there is a requirement that precludes you from being able to bid on the project

You rush to have the proposal out the door only to be notified that the due date has been extended
x2 if the due date was revised and proposals are now no longer being accepted

The RFP states that the project is a "life changing idea" or a "huge opportunity that can change the world"
x2 if it then states something such as "it's sort of like [Facebook, Craig's List, LinkedIn, etc.]"
x3 if "it's sort of like a mashup of [two or more existing products/ideas/services]"

The RFP includes math that is supposed to add up to 100% but doesn't.

The RFP includes lorem ipsum text, or placeholder text that was supposed to be removed.
x2 if it includes internal-only comments that were supposed to be removed
x3 if those internal-only comments are incriminating in some way

The RFP payment terms exceed 30 days.
x2 if the payment terms exceed 60 days
finish your drink if they state that they'll pay you only if they like the finished product and it exceeds their expectations

The RFP is due the day before a holiday
x2 if it is due the day after a holiday
x3 if the RFP is due on a day that the RFP says that their office will be closed

You learn about the RFP the day before proposals are due

x2 if you end up pulling an all-nighter to finish the proposal

x3 your boss tells you "winning this RFP is a must!"

* Please drink responsibly. If you find yourself intoxicated after the above drinking game, please 1) call a cab and 2) consider not bidding on that RFP.

Articles we've written include "9 tips for running a more considerate RFP process", "Developing your Go/No-Go Decision Tree", and "6 steps for writing a better RFP". More Request for Proposal articles can be found here. We are also own and maintain the RFP Database

Do you believe it is impossible to win a blind RFP?

2011-01-31T17:03:00.000-05:00

"Conventional Wisdom" in the sales arena says that if you weren't involved in writing the Request for Proposals with the client, chances are you have no shot at winning the resulting project. This cynical viewpoint is in just about every publication we've read that has an article on RFPs.

We decided to take the question about whether it was impossible to win a RFP and up the stakes to the "blind RFP", the RFP that you weren't even personally sent, but that you found out in the aether and decided to bid on. Is it impossible to win a blind RFP?

We posed this question to our LinkedIn group and received quite a few responses. All of the responses were appropriately cautious and realistic in acknowledging the long odds of winning. But almost all of the respondents said that yes, they do submit to blind RFPs and have won blind RFPs in the past. No respondents said that they will not submit to blind RFPs. And the tool for many of them was a good go/no-go decision tree.

Please check out the conversation and add your thoughts!

Thinking about how you spend your money

2010-12-18T15:02:00.000-05:00

This is a first for us as we've never posted an article with the sole purpose of disseminating another's work. But this article was so open and honest, expressing a small business owner's challenges (and frustrations) that we felt we needed to give it any and all additional publicity that we possibly could.

What we CAN’T do for you at Essentials this Christmas

Essentials is a small, quirky store down the street from us in Northampton with super-friendly employees and great owners that support the community and numerous causes. Reading the article linked above reminded us about the power that we have with how we choose to spend our money, where we choose to spend it, and the types of businesses that we need to support with our patronage. Sure, we price shop online, and yes, we sometimes go to the mall (usually as a last resort), but whenever you need to spend money, give some thought to how you're spending it. Consider "local first".

Blog tip #6: Creativity with Blogger; using it to make quality websites beyond the Blog

2010-11-15T11:15:00.007-05:00

Pinch Gallery

For some time now, we've been documenting how people can take advantage of Google's Blogger service to make blogs that really showcase their incredible content by using the flexibility provided by this free hosted service. That's why we were surprised when we came across an article detailing the blog platforms among the top 100 blogs and noticed three things: that very few of those blogs use Blogger (3%, one of which is Google's Blogger Blog so really only 2%), that the majority of the blogs listed there are exceptionally unattractive and/or use default templates*, and that the ones that are good looking are all custom software (A List Apart is a good example).

Since our first foray into fully customizing a Blogger blog beyond the standard templates or pre-built templates, we've been exploring possibilities with other blogs and seeing how far we could push the functionality included in Blogger, but also trying to capitalize on Google's other free services. Pinch Gallery's website redesign project gave us the opportunity to take Blogger even further. We took advantage of both Blogger and Picasa and created a beautiful website with a rich visual experience that matched the feel of the store's unique brand.

Why did we do it?

You may be asking yourself why, as a web development firm with expertise and a focus on building custom content management systems, we would put effort into using Blogger as a CMS for a client. There are a number of factors that went into this decision, mainly:

Low cost to deploy
No need to saddle a client with extra hosting fees and server issues
Ease of use for the client using full range of Google services
Self-sufficient, once launched little need for site maintenance by web development firm
Google karma and search engine benefits
Alternative to overly-complex off-the-shelf software packages

Blogger enables us to deploy a feature-rich website and CMS at a lower cost when a custom content management system is not needed based on the technical requirements of the project. And with the added benefit of free hosting, it further lowers the learning curve for the clients' management of their site. We believe that, when a custom solution is not warranted and the budget limits the scope of the project, providing a Blogger-based solution can achieve a high level of return on investment.

How did we do it?

Created a CSS template like any other website

Elbow Room Coffee Company

The trick to Blogger, as with any modern website development, is extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). You can design just about any sort of website/web page, code it in standards-compliant HTML/CSS, and turn that into a Blogger site. It can even be a one-page site if that's your goal. Beyond that it is simply a matter of copy/pasting the different include elements from the system into the div containers that you've built into your design. The Firebug plugin for Firefox is extremely handy when it comes to identifying the specific elements within the page for styling in CSS. If your design requires Javascript files to work, you can create an extra "site" using Google Sites that functions as your file repository.

Got creative with IF/ELSE statements

With the Pinch website we wanted the homepage to look a bit different than other pages within the site, and with a little if/else mastery, you can make some pages look or behave different. You can make the homepage different than the interior pages, some interior pages different than other interior pages, etc. For example, on the homepage of the website we wanted to have the photo gallery, but didn't want that section to be in the rest of the pages. Simply wrapping that div with an if/else statement like the one below let us accomplish that!

<b:if cond="data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl">
<div id="gallery">
</div>
</b:if>

You can learn more about if/else statements in Blogger, and other manipulation, on this help page.

Used the Pages for the "standard" web pages in the site

Renew Pilates, Easthampton MA

One of the limitations that used to frustrate us with Blogger was that some times you really just need to be able to create a webpage that is not a blog article. You could hack your way around it, burying a blog article by post-dating it and referencing it directly, but that's just sloppy. Thankfully they stopped this madness by adding the ability for you to make a small (10) number of standalone web pages within the site. While the limitation of 10 standalone pages might seem arbitrary, for the majority of websites it's a perfectly acceptable amount. For the content that is continually changing, that's where you can use the "blog" functionality!

Organized the main content of artists and event announcements as blog articles

The major types of content that we identified for the Pinch site as being the ones that would be continually updated were the new artist bios, organized by categories, and special event announcements. As we didn't care for these two content types to be co-mingled on a page, at least not one being displayed to visitors, we took steps such as limiting the display of the blog on the homepage to one article only. After that we created managed lists, and label pages, that limited the articles by labels that we specified such as "artist", "event", or combinations such as "artist" and "jewelry". Using this technique we broke up the "blog" feel of the site while still making use of it and getting past the 10 page limitation.

Created a slideshow and stored photographs in Picasa

We knew that with this project that the success of the website resided squarely in the photography of the pieces, and their showcasing within the site. At the same time, we wanted to make sure that the client was easily able to add photos to articles/pages, add photos to an album that was used for the slideshow, and make the resizing necessary to properly fit the space allocated in the design. Picasa and Picnik to the rescue! Using these two services the client is able to easily upload and store photographs, resize images to fit the slideshow dimensions, rearrange the order of the slideshow and much more. The slideshow functionality is a Flash movie that is generated by Picasa using the "embed" functionality; when the page loads it gets the photos and ordering information necessary and automatically creates the new Flash file, no coding necessary and no extra software required.

And the result?

In the words of Jena Sujat, owner of Pinch Gallery,

"My two favorite things about the new pinch website are how beautiful it is and how easy it is for customers, and for us at pinch, to use. I am grateful to be able to update almost everything myself, quickly and easily, and to see the changes immediately. It makes for easy editing and instant gratification. I feel in control of the store's web content like I never have before."

* Not to bash Wordpress, but when bloggers speak highly about Wordpress, one of their main reasons for choosing it is the ability to really customize the look of their blog using the wealth of templates and code availability, but if that's the case, why are the majority of those top 100 blogs that are Wordpress blogs so... generic looking? This also doesn't apply to the "free/hosted" Wordpress.com solution, where your design freedom is limited to the available templates.

Don't play the RFP budget cat-and-mouse game

2010-11-04T09:40:00.006-04:00

We're often called by organizations that are preparing to formulate a RFP and are looking for guidance on one of the biggest questions that you need to tackle in the process: Should I include our budget for the project in the RFP?

Mistaken belief in receiving lower prices

Organizations believe that if you provide vendors with your budget, that they will almost certainly charge the maximum amount that your budget allows, and we hear that mistaken justification almost every time. If a vendor knows they are going into a competitive bid process they're going to give you their best price for the project since they're afraid to lose out to a less expensive competitor. It is highly doubtful that they will raise their rates and project estimates in this case as it would potentially cause them to lose the project to a vendor that put in a lower rate.

Good talent will not respond

Not knowing whether the project has a budget, or what that budget is, is often a cue for quality vendors to decide against spending the non-billable time working on your proposal since they're essentially throwing darts in the dark. A quality proposal from a quality company requires that they fully understand the scope of the project, and budget is a large factor in scope. They might pitch you the greatest project ever conceived, but if your budget is 1/10th of the budget necessary to implement it, you've just wasted their time and yours.

Working towards the best solution for the budget

With a stated budget vendors know that this is a real project. They know that you're serious. And using that number they can work with you to formulate their best project pitch. Looking at the budget a web development firm might say "we can't give you a truly custom solution for this budget, but we can use some off-the-shelf packages to get you 90% of what you need". Or a firm might say "Ok, this isn't the budget we'd like to have for this project, but we'll discount our rates to do it for this price". Or they might simply say "we can't do it for anywhere near this price, but perhaps we'll forward this to a firm we know that might want to bid on it".

All of these responses are better than wasted time and wasted responses from companies that missed the mark in terms of hitting your undisclosed budget.

The moral of the story? Give your vendors the information they need in order to craft the best proposal that meets your needs but also fits your budget.

Business Group Therapy, a Western Massachusetts weekly small group workshop

2010-06-15T14:40:00.006-04:00

Some of the best business advice can often come from peers that are complete strangers. The ability to go outside your usual business advisers, meet other business leaders, and solicit their opinions on challenges facing your company can be a valuable endeavor. The Business Group Therapy workshop will provide you with, in a small-group format, the ability to brainstorm on a challenge facing your business with five other business leaders from outside your industry.

The Schedule

The event will be one hour in length, starting at 1:00pm on Thursdays, with the first session on July 15, 2010. The events will be held at the offices of Confluent Forms LLC at 182 Main Street in Northampton.

Who Should Attend

These events are for individuals who lead or manage an endeavor and want to gain insight from other leaders outside their existing circle of advisors regarding a specific issue that they are tackling. You can be a project manager at a bank, a blogger, the owner of a health food store, a director of a non-profit, a freelance writer... anyone that leads an endeavor that they devote themselves to.

This series is a strategy session as well as a small-group networking event; we encourage you to apply even if networking events are normally not something you attend.

The Format

Five attendees will be selected for an event from the received applications, each coming from a different business area so you won't be sitting across from your competitor. The first ten minutes will be introductions, followed by ten minutes devoted to each of the attendees. The first two minutes of each attendee's time will be for an introduction of the business challenge followed by eight minutes of round-table discussion and brainstorming on that challenge.

How to Apply

Please send an email to david@confluentforms.com with the following information:

Your name
Business name
Email address
Short description of your business
A recent business breakthrough that you've had
Business challenge you'd like to discuss

For each weekly session we will invite five people to attend based on their businesses and the business challenge they want to discuss; those not invited during one week will be considered for subsequent sessions. You can also apply to attend more than one meeting!

The Facilitator

David Kutcher is the co-owner of Confluent Forms LLC, a boutique branding, graphic design, web design and custom software development firm, as well as the co-founder of the RFP Database, a marketplace and exchange for Requests for Proposals that announces approximately $1 billion in business opportunities each week. David has worked intimately with businesses both large and small, startups, non-profits and educational institutions, writes a business and technology column for MassLive, and has written numerous articles on sales strategies related to Requests for Proposals.

Questions?

If you have questions about the event please feel free to contact David Kutcher at david@confluentforms.com or (413) 303-9612.

Don't lament an unfilled need; fill that niche yourself

2010-05-20T08:05:00.008-04:00

Have you ever found yourself saying "I wish there was someone that did [insert]"? You then scramble around, ask a few people, put out a few inquiries, perhaps run a google search, and low and behold, nothing. Without thinking much about it, you just stumbled upon an untapped opportunity. You've identified there was a need (because you just wanted it), and you've also, in a quick way, demonstrated that there was a lack of providers for that need. But that's often where the thought process stops. You might lament the fact that nobody is doing this thing that you've identified a need for, perhaps vent your frustration in a blog article or twitter post that you can't find this/that close to you, and then move on, perhaps missing out on a golden opportunity.

Lots of people express their desire to one day start their own business but feel that they haven't found "the Idea" that will lead them to the Promised Land of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Ownership. What most people fail to realize is that the Idea doesn't have to be amazing, it doesn't have to be entirely unique, and it doesn't even have to be grand in scale; the only business requirement is that it fills a Need.

The Valley Art Share, finding and filling a role

In 2008, the Commonwealth Center for Change approached the Northampton Arts Council. The Center lamented that there wasn't a good place for artists to post public profiles, discuss issues, and advertise their events in to a public events calendar. At first they wanted the Arts Council to fill this role, but the Council, due to limited budget and staffing, couldn't take on more work. The Arts Council encouraged the Center to create the site themselves; they then asked the Arts Council for a grant to make the site. Julia Handschuh, now the co-Director, and I sat down for a brainstorming meeting and we arrived at Ning, a free/low-cost system that enabled the organization to quickly, easily and inexpensively (almost free) set up the site that was named the Valley Art Share.

The site has been live for over a year and can be called nothing less than a success. Artists and arts organizations continue to join, events are published, profiles expanded upon, and discussions flourish. A need was filled by an organization with initiative.

My own example

My web design firm is a small business, and as such, our sales strategy has to be exceptionally organic yet targeted so that we're not wasting valuable time chasing dead-end leads. In the early stages of our company we chased any lead that we could find, paid for expensive Request for Proposal and lead-generating services to bring us potential projects, and even tried the cold-calling route. We often found great RFPs that we were qualified for, but found out about them too late. The lead-generation services we paid hundreds and thousands of dollars for turned up few projects that we could bid on. And nothing is truly as dispiriting as cold-calling. There was nowhere on the market that was compiling RFPs and providing them for a reasonable price.

This was our "A HA!" moment. Being that we're a web development firm it wasn't hard to create a website that was equipped for the task, and we realized that if we were having this trouble, there were probably hundreds and thousands of other sales teams having the same trouble. So, frustrated by the lack of return on investment on these costly services and wastes of time, we created a site called the RFP Database. We initially populated it with RFPs that we found in our searches for projects but that weren't good fits for our company. We encouraged others to do that same. That site has grown to over 70,000 registered users, has announced over 25,000 RFPs with an average of 400 new RFPs each week (~$1 billion in opportunities), and has grown steadily since its inception. It fills a need, while doing so with a unique value proposition that makes everyone's ROI calculations jump in favor of joining ($2 for a $1,000,000 lead? a no-brainer).

Put your talents and interests to good use

Perhaps you're a restaurateur, have you noticed that the your area doesn't seem to have a good Jewish deli? Or maybe you're a real estate mogul or venture capitalist; the lack of small-sized office spaces and incubator spaces is frustrating. Or dance classes, or book groups, or wedding planning, or what have you. Whenever you have a frustration from being unable to find something, you're simply identifying a need. And if you have that need, others likely do too.

So why not lead the effort? Write down your idea in as much detail as possible. Determine what it would need to exist. Does it need a store front, a storage space, a website... is it something you can do from home in your spare time or something that you'd have to take a plunge to accomplish? Could you do it yourself or would you need to partner with someone else? How much investment is needed in time and money? Are there people or organizations that you could reach out to that might be interested in partnering with you on this idea who could lessen your exposure or make it happen faster?

You can also approach it from the other angle of "what service can I provide that nobody else seems to be providing?", "what do I wish I could drive down the street to get instead of driving to Hartford?", or "what would I do more of if it was located nearby?".

Then take the plunge. Make it happen! Become a doer, a mover-and-shaker, an inspired individual on a mission. Create something that fills that need in your community and don't look back. It's not always so simple, but there is no harm in taking just that first step.

Back to Basics: Calculating your 'Return on Investment' is more important than ever

2010-05-12T10:30:00.005-04:00

All good business decisions prominently feature your ROI, otherwise known as Return on Investment, into the equation. Whether the decision is to hire a new employee, lease a larger office space, buy 20,000 business cards, or undertake a new sales initiative, every decision has at its core the base question of "is this decision worth my time/money/effort and will it pay off in the end?" This is a relevant question to ask at any time, but it seems that, with the economy the way it is, this question starts becoming more and more important. How will you spend your money and how will you put both your money as well as your time to best use?

With many decisions it is easy to identify your ROI, but also to make a decision based purely on the decision's bottom line. For example, hiring a new employee. It's fairly easy to estimate how much an employee will cost over the course of a year, and using income projections, also easy to determine the range of income that new employee will generate for your business. Cost and profit are pretty straight forward. But for some reason, when it comes to technology purchases and web initiatives, something about technology causes people to move outside the purely rational ROI-based decision process and to factor "hip", "cool", and "sexy" into the equation. Suddenly the number of megapixels, gigs of RAM, number of processors, search engine optimization ranking, and auto-Tweeting connection to the Blogosphere/Twittersphere/Facebook consumes you with indecision and extra expenses.

"If you're not doing [insert], you might be missing lots of potential customers."

The idea of missing out on "the new" and being behind the curve clouds your normal business acumen with a fear of obsolescence, in the same way that you're afraid to buy hardware that you fear will be obsolete in a few months. You get so caught up in the extra features that you lose track of the purpose of your purchase. In being seduced by how something looks you miss the mark on achieving its original goals.

I bought a computer about six years ago; a middle of the road Sony desktop. It was quiet, pretty fast but not blazing, and had a motherboard that supported an acceptable amount of expansion. This probably wouldn't be noteworthy except for the fact that, as the owner of a software development firm, I'm what you would consider a "power user", and that I'm still using that same computer to this day. I've added to it over the years, replacing the video card, adding a second monitor, adding some RAM and a new hard drive... but it's still the same machine and still working great to this day. On the other hand I know plenty of people that buy a new computer every 3 years, each of which cost more than my original purchase, and they use it for little more than email, surfing the web, and light word processing. They read all about their purchase and convince themselves that they need that power and need all those bells and whistles, many of which they'll never use in the typical three years that they're using their computer. They tell me that it'll last them longer, as if spending more now means it won't be just as obsolete in the near future.

Technology took you for an expensive ride.

It's not just hardware that sucks you in to a poor purchasing decision, and it's hardly limited to the average consumer. Back in the "dotcom" days there were quite a few stories of companies paying six and seven figures for what resulted in a 5 page website with nothing special to make them cost so much. Since then the story has evolved to spending money on micro-sites, blogging, search engine optimization (SEO), social media strategies (Facebook and Twitter are often cited), Second Life, or whatever the hot technology buzzword is for that given day.

In the vast majority of the cases these technologies end up being huge expenditures of money (relative to the company) with very little return on that investment. What's worse is that even after acknowledging that you've spent more money than you ever intended on the technology, you continue to spend money believing that any gains will be lost and that one day it will end up making a return on your investment.

How does [insert] technology fit into your business' strategy?

When evaluating any technology purchase it's important to put the purchase in the context of your goals for your purchase. What will it actually accomplish for your business, how will it fulfill goals you have, and what reasonable return (best and worse case) can you expect for your purchase? And while some of these questions can be asked right away, others require a long-term approach for evaluating the on-going success of the purchase. With these long-term purchases, what metrics do you have in place to measure their success?

This soul searching isn't just for new purchases, and can be just as important when you need to start cutting budgets. A hacksaw approach to cutting your expenses and budgets is often the quickest and easiest way to lower costs, but if you have metrics (the next article) in place to evaluate certain programs' ROI, you could take an analytical view of the costs, see their relative ROI, and cut back the programs that aren't earning you the return that you need.

It's high time to get smart about your purchasing decisions. Taking an analytical look at the return on investment from each spending choice you make will enable your organization to be that much more effective with each dollar you put to use.

Your proposal lost, now what? Conducting a RFP post-mortem

2010-03-19T11:35:00.005-04:00

The harsh reality is that more often than not your proposal will not win the project during a Request for Proposals. You won't win 50% of the time, and you might not win even 25% of the time. If you don't have a thick skin when it comes to rejection you might want to consider a different business.

But all is not lost, through adversity comes triumph, in much the same was as Ulysses in the Odyssey.

Tempting RFPs are like the Sirens, projects-by-committee are like Scylla...

If you've been following our blog articles regarding Requests for Proposals you are familiar with our repeated philosophy of being selective in the RFPs you respond to as well as developing an objective means of selecting the right RFPs to respond to. If you're following the advice in these two articles, you're already on your way to establishing a foundation for performing a post-mortem on your proposal.

Do you know why you lost?

Sometimes we go into a project knowing the likelihood is that we have no chance of winning. We put time into a proposal because, well, even though the chances are slim, we could pull an upset and win! Not to mention that there could be secondary benefits to us simply taking the field. But even if you think you know why you lost it is still beneficial to you in the long run to complete a RFP post-mortem because every failure is a good opportunity to learn.

There is no failure except in no longer trying.
~Elbert Hubbard

Have you asked them?

Don't be afraid to ask why another company's proposal was chosen over your own. They might not always respond or give you any real answer, but it can't hurt to ask, and the knowledge you gain might be extremely useful in future proposals. It also reiterates to the client that yes, you were very interested in the project, in more than a casual way.

Were you too expensive?

We included this because, when you lose a proposal, you immediately assume you were too expensive. Don't make this assumption! For all you know you were the least expensive and that led them to disbelieve your proposal. Again, don't be afraid to ask details about the winning proposal. Ask targeted questions and you should receive targeted responses.

Even if you were more expensive than the selected proposal, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should lower your rates. In your proposal you should always be pitching the rate that you want to receive and feel your value dictates. If you lose to a lower-priced competitor, it means one of two things: either the client didn't have budget for your increased project cost, or you didn't do a good enough job of justifying your value as it related to your pricing. And if you had properly pre-qualified the lead, that leaves your proposal coming up short.

Was it something you didn't do?

One of the most common reasons for rejection is one that you can easily avoid: non-compliance with the RFP. Font size, length of proposal, required questions, number of copies of the proposal... all of these are simple things that could have stood in the way of you and winning your project. The good thing is that once you realize that non-compliance is the reason why you lost a proposal you'll likely never make that mistake again!

Was it something you didn't say or how you said it?

You're intimately knowledgeable about the product or service that you're proposing; the problem is often that the recipient of your proposal might not be as up-to-speed on the topic. Without knowing it, your proposal could be losing because you failed to mention something so simple and obvious to you that the client was looking for but didn't see in your documentation! While the conversation might be like "We were looking for xyz in your proposal / Didn't you see that on page 9 in the section discussing vwx?" it'll bring this issue to your attention and enable you to fix it in the next proposal.

Are you capturing their attention?

Some people learn this the hard way. While not a recommended practice as most clients prefer you deliver all of the proposal material to them instead of making them go get it, in this case it clearly articulated that the client only gave their proposal a cursory glance. How many of your proposals have only received a cursory glance without you even knowing it? The right solution shouldn't be to spy on the client, but perhaps ask follow-up questions such as "what parts of our proposal were considered winners? which parts of our proposal did we lose you on? did we articulate the cost-benefit-analysis of our product/service sufficiently?"

What to do next?

Learn from your mistakes and make the next proposal better. Evaluate the reasons why you lost and re-factor them into your go/no-go decision tree. Revisit your "default proposal"; is the format and content working in your favor or working against you? It might be convenient, but if it doesn't provide results, perhaps it's time to revise it in some major way. And lastly, consider bringing in a specialized consultant to review your proposal materials and perhaps help you craft stronger presentations.

Blog tip #5: Burn your feed and distribute it widely

2010-03-09T11:30:00.004-05:00

Lets be honest; when we write blog articles we do so because we want people to read them. And not just a few people, we want as many readers as possible. The challenge in today's online content realm is that you can't rely on your audience always coming to you, there are simply too many other things fighting for your viewers' attention. So instead of being reliant on your visitors coming to you, you need to incorporate strategies that push your content to your audience and, if they're interested, deliver your content to them whenever you publish.

Feedburner to the rescue!

FeedBurner is another one of those incredible services provided by Google (ok, they bought the original company, but they've made great improvements). FeedBurner does more than just clean up your RSS feed* and give you statistics on your readers; FeedBurner enables you to easily distribute your content via affiliate sites, email, Web 2.0 services, twitter... and in combination with other services such as Ping.fm, you can also announce new articles to Facebook, MySpace, and many more. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. In this article we'll be helping you to get started in FeedBurner, configuring your account, and using FeedBurner to drive new traffic to your site while capitalizing on the traffic that reaches your site.

Getting started

Getting started with Feedburner is easy; simply head over to http://feedburner.google.com and login using your established Google/Gmail account. The piece of information that you'll need to move forward with Feedburner is the URL of your current feed. By default your Blogger feed URL will look like http://YOURWEBSITEURL/feeds/posts/default or you can grab the URL by looking for a symbol in your layout and grabbing the URL that it links to.

Once you've "burned" your blog's feed you'll be asked to give it a title (to be used for display purposes so give it a proper and complete name), as well as the ability to customize the new feed URL address. Try to keep it short and relevant.

Once your new address has been created you need to go back into your Blogger dashboard; under the "Settings" tab is a navigation item for "Site Feed". In the field entitled "Post Feed Redirect URL" you want to enter the new feed address that you've been assigned by Feedburner. Keep in mind that you want to hit "Next" in Feedburner before changing your feed address in Blogger!

Common configurations for your account

The next screen that Feedburner will present you with is an "unpacking" screen where you can customize the results you want tracked; there is no reason to not check all of the boxes and hit save.

Heading over the the "Optimize" tab, there are three options that you need to focus on: BrowserFriendly, SmartFeed, and FeedFlare.

BrowserFriendly, as the sub-title aptly states, makes subscribing simpler. When a visitor clicks on your feed's icon on your site, they will be taken to a webpage that now displays your RSS feed in a more readable format while providing them with a selection of reader buttons. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for a visitor to add your feed into whatever feed reader service they are using.

SmartFeed is a simple service that only requires that you activate it; activating it will enable your feed to be automatically configured and compatible with any feed reader application. We're not sure why they don't do this by default, but it's worth activating if it does what it purports to do. The third option, FeedFlare, gives you the ability to add social media bookmarklets to your feed items, giving your feed subscribers the easy ability to share an item by email, del.icio.us, digg, facebook, etc. You can go as crazy or as conservative as you'd like with these, but we recommend "email this", del.icio.us, digg, facebook, and stumble.

Start spreading the news!

Head over to the "Publicize" tab. The first thing you want to do is click on the PingShot service. While lots of news services and aggregators will automatically check your blog for updates, sometimes it's hard to initially get your blog onto those services. Enable PingShot and don't let those news services miss any of your posts.

Next, go to the Email Subscriptions service. Click on the bottom to "Active" the service. There are four parts to this section: subscription management, communication preferences, email branding, and delivery options. On subscription management will be two methods for incorporating the email subscription functionality into your blog; you can either add subscription into your blog as a form via a widget, or you can add it as a link that will take up less space within your site. If you're using TypePad or Blogger, adding the functionality of either the form or the link to your blog is as simple as selecting the blog software you're using from the dropdown menu and hitting "Go". FeedBurner will then walk you through automatically adding the code to your blog as a widget.

After you've added the email widget to your site, you can customize how the email system will work by going to the sub-navigation items under the Email Subscription item. You can then customize when the emails are sent out, the look-and-feel of the email including adding your logo, and other options regarding your emails.

Recently FeedBurner added the ability to connect your Twitter account to your RSS feed through their service using Socialize. In the past we'd used Twitterfeed and Ping.fm to accomplish similar functionalities, but being able to do this through FeedBurner makes life easier.

Once you've hooked up your Twitter account to FeedBurner, using the "Add a Twitter account" button, FeedBurner will start auto-tweeting new articles that are added to your RSS feed. The system will automatically shorten the URLs to your articles, and using the Socialize page, you can customize the formatting of the tweets. You can set the titles/description format, include hashtags or additional text, and other formatting options.

Lots more to customize

In this article we've only covered the basics and options that we believe you need to configure in order to get started, but FeedBurner has many more features and options that you should definitely explore including Monetizing and more. But in addition to the functionalities that it provides, having a service that cleans up and manages your RSS feed will come in very handy in the future...

Previous article: Blog tip #4: Gain insights into your visitors using Analytics

* RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a format for easily sharing content that is frequently published and read using a Feed Reader.

Blog tip #4: Gain insights into your visitors using Analytics

2010-02-17T10:00:00.004-05:00

Google Analytics is a service provided by Google that enables webmasters, through the inclusion of a small bit of code in their website template, to gain a pretty good breakdown of their site's usage and log reporting. Beyond the basics of visits, page views, etc., the system also permits the creation of goals and funnel paths that can be created to track conversion rates for visitors performing specified tasks within the site.

The information that Analytics provides is not just for your own gratification that people visit your website; the data can help you see how effective your site is at:

Getting people to your site
Accomplishing tasks and goals
Tracking statistics
Understanding the habits of your visits
... and much more

The information that your reporting system provides will tell you, quantifiably, how your site is performing, and will provide you with hints as to what can be done to improve your site.

For example, how are people finding your website? Is it by referring sites, search engines or direct traffic? What keywords are they finding you by and are you being found by phrases that you specifically want to target? What percentage of people are coming to your site and immediately leaving after the homepage? How many pages are your visitors hitting in a session and how long are they staying on the site? Are they performing the tasks that you want them to perform such as contacting you, leaving comments, or signing up to receive a newsletter?

Getting started

Google Analytics, like other Google services, uses your Gmail address as your account. Once you've signed in for the first time the system will prompt you to create a New Website Profile. This profile is based on the URL of your site so as to keep track of your site based on it's location information. Since this is your first account in Analytics you'll want to check "Add a Profile for a new domain". In the field below that fill in the complete URL for your site, including www if that's part of your site location, but remove the HTTP://. Once completed, hit "Continue".

Upon submitting, Analytics will provide you with a block of Javascript code that you'll need to highlight, copy (Ctrl+C), then paste (Ctrl+V) into your Blogger template.

After copying the code, head back to the Blogger site. Click on the "Layout" tab in the header, and then go to "Edit HTML". Remember, any time you are making changes to your template you should save a backup of your template to your computer by clicking on "Download Full Template".

Scroll to the bottom of your template code. The Analytics code that you previously copied needs to go at the bottom of your template, above the </html> tag but below the </body> tag. Once pasted into the correct location click on the "Save Template" button and you're all set.

Looking at the numbers

Each of the statistics available to you gives you insight into how successful your website is in accomplishing its tasks, but also what you need to do to improve its performance. These should not be major changes; they should be small incremental changes to see how your statistics change based on an update performed. For instance, if you change the text on your homepage to use more key words and phrases, are you noticing better search queries and more people from search engines? If you're noticing a high bounce rate, changing some of the calls to action, or maybe the phrasing of your navigation items, can often have an immediate affect on performance.

At each stage in the process record what you did and take a performance snapshot. See how your site performs for a 4 week period, then re-evaluate and repeat.

Next article: Blog tip #5: Burn your feed and distribute it widely
Previous article: Blog tip #3: Interesting designs are widely available for your Blog

Blog tip #3: Interesting designs are widely available for your Blog

2010-02-01T17:45:00.004-05:00

Being able to fully customize the layout and design of your blog, while still being hosted by a free blog platform, is unique to Google's Blogger service. Sure, other blog services have the ability to select from a number of selected template designs (and Bloggers are by far the most boring), and all of the services include the ability to modify the page elements in your layout, but Blogger goes the farthest by allowing users to modify the actual code of the template through standards compliant CSS*.

There are three directions you can take your blog design customization:

You can make small changes to a Blogspot template
You can import a freely available template from elsewhere and customize it
You can build a template based on an existing site and use that for your blog (ours is modeled after our corporate site)

The level of customization available to you is entirely dependent on your programming ability. If you are a CSS wizard, you'll have little difficulty turning any design you like into a blog template (stay tuned for an Advanced Level article on doing this).

For everyone else I recommend attempting small changes to one of the default templates provided by Blogger or venturing out to find a template that speaks to you. Thankfully there are a number of sites that provide hundreds, perhaps thousands of templates absolutely free that are SIMPLE to install and customize:

BTemplates
BloggerStyles
BloggerTemplates (navigate in the header by # of columns)
DeluxeTemplates

Of these sites my favorite by far is the BTemplates site that is both easy to use, is easy to search for templates based on a criteria, and provides well over 1,000 templates to choose from.

With any of these sites the process to use one of these designed templates is the same:

choose the design you like by downloading the .zip file to your computer
unzip the zip file so you now have a folder with files inside including a .xml file
go to the Layout tab in Blogger and click on "Edit HTML" in the sub-navigation
upload the template from your hard drive by clicking on the "Browse" button and selecting the .xml file you just unzipped
click on the "Upload" button

Don't forget to backup your existing layout by clicking on the link "Download Full Template" BEFORE you upload the new template!

In uploading your new template you might receive a few small error messages regarding conflicts; these sometimes occur when a page element that you are currently using is not set up in the template you're installing. Agree to remove the element, then once you have the new template established, re-add the page element and your content should still be there.

At this point you should be able to click on the link to "View Your Blog" and see your old content in the new layout design. Based on the template you might see items that don't make sense in your site, leftovers from the original developer. Again, based on your coding comfort level, you can go into the "Edit HTML" page within Blogger and make direct changes to the template code which can include anything from changing a background photograph to updating the style sheet to use a different font. The changes you make are entirely up to you!

Next article: Blog tip #4: Gain insights into your visitors using Analytics
Previous article: Blog tip #2: Domain names are inexpensive, no excuses

* CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, more information found here.

Blog tip #2: Domain names are inexpensive, no excuses

2010-01-27T11:00:00.007-05:00

Coming across a blog that is using a blogspot.com address, like yourblog.blogspot.com, tells us one of two things: that the owner doesn't know that giving the site a custom domain name is easy and inexpensive, or that they don't take their blog seriously. How serious could it be if they won't spend just $10 on a domain in order to customize the first, most important aspect of your site, your URL.

Using Google's Blogger service you are able to quickly and easily customize your blog to use either an existing domain or one that you can purchase through the site. This isn't a service charge as you could buy the domain elsewhere and still use it, and unlike the other blog services the ability to do this doesn't cost you extra.

If you don't own a domain

Google is not the cheapest registrar for buying your domain, however, the difference in costs is less than $5 and the difference in simplicity is worth much more than that if you're not technically inclined. Google also provides complete DNS management, customized email addresses using their Gmail service and other services they provide through their Google Apps. The other services that Google provides will come in handy in the next articles.

The steps for getting a custom domain set up for your blog start at the "Settings" tab and clicking on the "Publishing" sub-navigation item. Click on the "Custom Domain" link and the screen will switch to the domain purchasing screen. At this point you have the option of either purchasing a new domain name or you can click on "switch to advanced settings" in order to point a domain purchased elsewhere to your blog.

After purchasing your domain you'll see a message below that Blogger will automatically redirect readers who might be going to your freebie name to your website under the new domain name.

If you already own a domain

So you've decided to go the harder way, eh? Don't worry, it's not that difficult. The nice thing is that Google has already written instructions for you to follow for some of the most common domain registrars.

You'll need to set up the DNS entries with the registrar first THEN do the settings in the Blogger system. It might take 24-48 hrs for your DNS changes to propagate, or it might be immediate... such is the Internet.

Adding your blog to an existing domain

Lots of companies use their domain for their corporate website but then want to have a blog that is affiliated with their company. For a corporate blog the logical URL for you to set up is "blog.yourcompany.com". This is easily accomplished by adding a CNAME record to your DNS through your registrar that looks like:

blog -/- CNAME -/- ghs.google.com.

Once you've added this line to your DNS registry follow the same directions as above.

In conclusion

The nice thing about changing the URL of your blog to a custom domain is that, instead of looking like a cheap, disposable blog, the site now begins to look like time and effort have been invested in the site.

Next article: Blog tip #3: Interesting designs are widely available
Previous article: Blog tip #1: Blogger over Wordpress (or other hosted solutions)

Blog tip #1: Blogger over Wordpress (or other hosted solutions)

2010-01-25T10:30:00.006-05:00

If you're trying to decide which blog service to use you've probably stumbled across the long-running debate in any number of forums. Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad... how do you choose which one to use? For the purposes of this series we're going to use the following criteria*:

free, hosted service
ability to fully customize the design
custom url at no extra cost (besides domain ownership)

The basis of this criteria is to yield you the most personalized blog solution that will enable you to customize all aspects of the site We want to accomplish this without requiring the need for a 3rd party web hosting solution, extensive technical expertise, or paying privilege or subscription fees.

The Blogger service, offered by Google, is the only service to fulfill these requirements. Both Typepad and Wordpress offer a free basic service that provides you with a wide range of features, many of which aren't immediately available to you with an off-the-shelf Blogger site. However, both of these services provide the free blog with limits to how far your can customize your site before you need to start paying. For example, Wordpress provides you with a wide selection of design templates to choose from when you create your blog, but if you want to truly customize the look of the site (and access the code) you need to either pay for the additional service or maintain your blog outside of the service.

What selecting Blogger as your platform means for you and your blog is that you can truly take advantage of the wealth of free third-party services that are available to you, customize your blog to make it look and function like you want it to be, and put the full wealth of Google services behind your site. All for 0 cost.

Next article: Blog tip #2: Domain names are inexpensive, no excuses
Previous article: Your Blog is unique, don't settle for a default Blog

* This criteria might not be your criteria and we encourage you to do some research to find the right solution for you based on your needs and level of technical expertise.

9 tips for running a more considerate procurement (RFP) process

2010-01-14T11:21:00.008-05:00

We've been on both sides of the procurement process and have seen more than our fair share of RFPs. With this background in mind we've put together our top 9 tips for running a more considerate procurement/RFP process.

1. Be upfront with bidders

Creating a winning proposal can cost thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of nonbillable work within a company. If you are issuing a RFP you can never forget that. Being upfront and honest with bidders on your RFPs will save bidders who, upon knowing the full details of your project, might not feel it's right for them, and will save them lots of nonbillable time, effort, and expense.

2. Speak with one voice

When you receive a proposal you expect it to be well-written, concise, and a meaningful response to your RFP. In order to write that meaningful response bidders need a document that clearly articulates the bidding opportunity. RFPs are often times the work of committees, and this fact can be seen mirrored in the RFP document through a mixture of voice, strategies, goals, and definitions. These different voices make reading and comprehension difficult, and can result in a proposal that is just as mixed in its messages.

3. Don't ask for freebies

We've spoken about this before, but asking for free ideas, free designs, free consulting, or free anything is known in the business world as "Spec work". Spec work is a huge disincentive to companies interested in bidding on your project for a number of reasons, many spelled out by AIGA, and can result in top talent making a decision to NOT bid on your project. A better, more considerate practice is to ask for examples of work similar to your own project, or perhaps even consider compensation in the form of stipends for proposals that provide spec work.

4. Receive organizational buy-in

In order to be successful a project needs to have complete organizational buy-in. Nothing sinks a project faster than having the President of the company behind a project, but a Senior VP quietly destroying the project through foot-dragging, poor communication, mixed messages, or outright hostility towards the initiative. Internal teams need to be in harmony before calling for the time and effort of outside firms. This often manifests itself through projects being canceled after proposals have been received because no decisions can be made.

5. Develop your information distribution strategy

"Didn't you get the addendum? We changed the ... last week!" In our last article we spoke about how and where to publicize your RFP; assume your RFP is going to get lots of attention and have a strategy in place for how to respond to everyone equally before you publish your RFP.

6. Research detailed requirements

The more effort, in the form of greater requirements detail, the better the results will be. Not only will responders be able to reply with targeted responses based on the details, but you won't be swamped with inquiries from bidders all asking for the information you neglected to give them. So, instead of scrambling to put together that detailed information in enough time for bidders to respond properly, you can be ahead of the process and provide it to them in the initial RFP.

7. Provide budget information

Stating your budget in a RFP is often a touchy subject. Issuing organizations often think that a RFP is so they can get a product or service for the cheapest price possible through competition. We choose to believe that RFPs are better used as a way to find the best product or service for your actual budget. Look at it this way: if you state your budget and it's below what a company can afford to charge, you won't have to read their proposal (because they won't write one). Companies that would normally deliver for less than your budget still will because they'll try to be the low bidders. And companies that could potentially deliver but might otherwise charge more than your budget might be inclined to discount their pricing.

8. Formulate exit surveys

One of the tools we'd like to see more procurement departments use is exit surveys. Require a simple registration (name, company, email) in order to gain access to the RFP files. You can use this information in your "information distribution strategy". After the project is completed, go back to that list. Ask the companies about your process, why they did or didn't submit a proposal, what parts were problematic, how they learned about the project, how the process can be improved, etc. Track responses, track distribution, and generate statistics.

9. Organize your communication

You want to make sure that every interested bidder on your project has equal access to all information related to the project, so keeping your communications equal and open is necessary. If you provide an answer to one bidder you should make both the question and the answer available to everyone at the same time through the use of addendum published along with the RFP. And no matter what, don't send out an email to all of the bidders with their email addresses in the To: or CC: fields; that is exactly what the BCC: field is for!

In conclusion

Please remember the time and nonbillable investment that bidders put into every proposal. Treat this time and effort as a responsibility on your part to run a fair and considerate procurement process. Not only will you find the right partner for your project, but you'll also earn the respect of the bidders. And while not one of the 9 tips, don't forget to contact everyone that submitted a proposal to you and thank them for their time.

For more on the subject please read a previous article entitled "RFP Etiquette: Dos and Don'ts for Business Matchmaking", my interview with Vince Giorgi of Touch Point City.