Launching new sites and rambling incessantly
A few months ago, MIND teamed up with Andy Mathers Design for a complete overhaul of a fun site called VotefortheBest. Since then, we’ve completed a successful beta, officially launched the new site, and will now continue to improve the site in terms of usability and functionality as time goes on. Websites, like most software, are never really finished — they just get released! So what’s this new and exciting site we’re talking about?
Every year most newspapers give a “best of” list at the end of the year, spotlighting the “best” restaurants, real estate pros, plumbers, etc. Let’s face it… some of the time, advertising dollars spent helps to determine who’s actually number one in a given publication. Check out VotefortheBest.com and put your vote in on a true, untainted list of the best local businesses. Who is your favorite barber, veterinarian, spa, web developer or web designer? Take two minutes and become a registered voter at www.voteforthebest.com and then cast your votes for your favorites in any or all of the categories. Share your experiences so that others can benefit by making more educated decisions. It’s fun…and a great way to help promote your favorite businesses!
Even though web development and web design is the way we make a living for ourselves, it’s not just a means to an end, everyone who works at MIND started out in their respective fields with a passion that only fellow geeks can really understand. Now when a project comes along that excites us, we tend to get a little more involved than we ought to. A list of specifications and a few wireframes is all it takes to really get our engine going! Still, knowing that, sometimes it’s difficult to draw the line between business and pleasure when your pleasure is also your business. Even if we had great careers in a completely unrelated field, we would still probably go home every day and code or sketch, just for fun. We absolutely love that people are willing to pay us a fair wage for something we enjoy doing, and being free from the typical restraints of the corporate world (there are no pointy-haired bosses, no meaningless meetings, and no passive-aggressive coworkers in our office) is icing on the cake.
Trying to convey your passion to clients is a difficult task — on the one hand, we’re probably putting some people off by even trying humbly to point this out, and on the other, some people will see your desire to do good work as a weakness and your attachment to your work as a means to exploit you. It’s also incredibly difficult when working with people without even a vague understanding of what you do or how you do it. You know what? It’s still worth it!
The greatest form of marketing, in our opinion, is unsolicited referrals. If you rock so hard at what you do that people are falling over themselves telling their friends about you, then you must be doing an awesome job. Put yourself out there, recognize when others are doing the same, and eventually that good karma will catch up with you. Maybe it’s a vote on VotefortheBest.com, maybe it’s a recommendation on Facebook, or maybe, just maybe, you’ll land that next huge deal or get that next step up that makes all the hard work worthwhile.
