Acorn Web Studio - Melbourne web design and web development

This week we are looking forward to becoming customers of Second Site, a new business that promises to make our business administration a lot easier.

We are still too small to hire a full time secretary, which means that currently, all those administrative tasks are still my responsibility. However from this week we will be welcoming Belinda onto our team.  she will be taking up key tasks in front of house, customer support and communications, as well as office management. I think it will end up making a huge difference in our business.

We've just had an interesting week, with a lot of deadline pressures.  Dealing with these gave me some interesting insights.

We were having some frustrating conversations with one client in particular.  By that I mean it was frustrating for both parties.  On our end we couldn't work out why the customer was fixating on seemingly trivial details, while the customer was probably wondering why we  seemed so incapable of following simple instructions.

Communication was hopelessly compromised.  We were speaking the same language but totally failing to understand each other.  We were arguing over technology and design points that just weren't critical, mostly because each side had no idea what the other was saying.  Positions threatened to become entrenched.

It took me asking a really simple question to break the deadlock.

“But my nephew can build my website for $600.”

Yes he can, but the question you have to ask is “Should he?”. 

We regularly hear statements like the one above, particularly from businesses that are just starting out, and are trying to keep costs to a minimum.  Because the business owner has no background knowledge in the technical requirements of building a website, or the practical needs of a website that actually makes a business grow they are usually totally unaware of the cost of such a decision.

We also see a fair few websites that have been built by a professional website design or development company, but which have been built in a substandard way.  This is a new and unregulated industry; the best techniques for building websites are constantly changing, as are the strategies that make a website successful.  Many so-called professional businesses, particularly at the bottom end of the market, are sadly lacking in best practices.

Educating consumers becomes a challenge in itself.

Learning Javascript is so far the hardest thing I have taken on since starting here at Acorn. Somehow the HTML and CSS all kind of made sense to my designer brain. Even though I didn't know any of it when I came here it didn't take much to start learning what limits I could push with them. But to step into programming land is to stop thinking as an artist would, think like computer.

We rely heavily on referrals here at Acorn. Not only is it a powerful and cost-effective way for us to find customers, but because trust and credibility are usually important criteria for our prospective clients, it seems to be one of the main ways people source services like ours anyway.

In recognition of this, to reward those who do pass business our way, and to encourage them to keep thinking of us, we have instigated a referral program.

This week I'm back to my BNI chapter, the Carlton branch. It's been nice having a break away - principally getting to sleep in on Thursday mornings, but I'm looking forward to catching back up with everyone.

In case you have never heard of it, BNI (or Business Networking International) is a business networking group, which is great for small businesses, particularly in their early stages. I don't think that I would still be in business without it.

I've just been to see my business coach.

Its hard to really describe what a difference he makes in my business. Sometimes I don't always notice the real difference myself. We just had a conversation reviewing the distance the business has travelled in the last few months. I hadn't noticed how much of the progress had come about because I was able to take advantage of Peter's experience and judgement.  When you are trying to grow your own business you can't put a price to that sort of thing.

He really has made a difference in helping me love my business.

Welcome to the world of Acorn.
This is my first post to the new blog. I just want to see how the post formats in both the detail and the summary (index) views.  I will be playing with the layout until I get it right.