Hocus pocus focus. Sorry I could not resist.
Today I need to put a lot of focus on web design and graphic design work. I have a bunch of things started that I need to narrow in the scope on a little bit. At the very least, make some more progress. Reel in the focus a little. There that is it.
So for all of you that are waiting for the big reveal of what was in the Penzeys Spices bag, I am sorry you are going to have to wait until I get through the following “to do” list.
I am busy working on a website review and evaluation and it is taking a lot longer than I expected it to. Today I need finish up the website review and get that emailed off to the client.
The fact that this is taking longer than I expected is not a bad thing necessarily. There is a lot of attention to details in these reviews. I try to be as objective as possible. I also try to be as thorough as possible. When the website is small, I can get them done in a day or two. When the website is a bit more massive, it takes a bit longer. With this particular website there is just so much to look at and consider. The initial review in all honestly is just going to touch the icing on the cake, it is not even going to slice into the cake. It will be like the child sticking their finger in the icing to get a taste. That should not scare people to be honest with you.
Upon talking with the client in depth, this might actually be better as this is a redesign project and this will give them time to truly think about what they want to do with the website over the long-term. Perhaps it will give them some focus and direction so to speak. That is the purpose of a review in some regards, to help guide and direct but not totally tell you what to do. It is just to give you ideas and suggestions. In a redesign project, these ideas and suggestions can be like gold especially when a redesign can be a major rebuilding time for any organization.
On another front, I need to set up a couple of client appointments for next week.
Then there are the current projects that I have poke and prod or is that needle and jab? Five projects that need to get moving.
There appears to be no rush for one of them, but when it comes down to it, I am sure everything will be an emergency. However, their emergency will not become mine. That is a big complaint of mine. Lack of planning does not mean that it becomes that it suddenly becomes an emergency for me. If it does, there will be extra fees involved. It is that simple. I do not do rush jobs without appropriate compensation. Fortunately, this should not take long once we get started again. It is just that people truly do not understand the importance of not letting a website go stagnant if they expect to keep active traffic to it. It takes time to build traffic to a website.
Three projects are a combined conglomerate effort. Different websites, same effort. A huge whopping dose of focus will be needed here no matter what we do. These have essentially become website recovery efforts due to staleness. You cannot put up a website and forget about it. You cannot. Long gone are the days of business card web presences. We live in the world of active web presences and you have to update your website often and frequently. You have to be an active participant in the process. Convincing people that this is not as hard as it appears is not always easy, but it still needs to be done.
Then there is always the project that is just the fun project that is dragging on because it is fun and it has to be just so. There is nothing wrong with it being just so. Things should be perfect and how the client wants it. I want it to be that way. I am not complaining about that at all. I am more than happy to tweak things one pixel at a time if I have to. I just want to get to the rest of the project and be done too. That is my struggle. I am enjoying working on this project so there are no complaints at all. The feedback is great and I tweak and we do it all over again. It works out great. It is just slow. I anticipate this process with every project so there is nothing new or unexpected here. It is just me being impatient, I suppose. I get excited to open Adobe Illustrator again though when I get to tweak things.
On another front, I need to prepare for a meeting next week (one of the appointments). I need to gather things together so that I make sure I have everything I need. No real presentation that I need to prepare. It is a meeting client about updates for the website, magazine ad, etc. Nothing too major. I am probably going to float a couple of ideas off of him, so I need to get that stuff together. Should be exciting stuff.
That is my focus list for today. Now that I have cooled down from my four mile bike ride this morning, I think that I can actually get to it…
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