It has been quite some time since I last posted here on Waukesha Web Designer and as some of you may have figured out, I have been pretty quiet across the board. To say that I have been somewhat busy would be a bit of an understatement, but as of the weeks end I plan to resume frequent posting to all of my “web real estate”.
With that I will say that having been at it for over a month now (freelancing full time that is), you can be sure that the amount of knowledge I will have to share has increased tremendously. In the past few weeks, I have taken on projects that have allowed not only to develop my business skill but have allowed to push my coding and design abilities to new limits. I will be sharing soon and yes my portfolio will get an update.
If you have [...]

There is a lot that goes into developing a successful website and creating a positive client relationship. As I venture off on my own looking to take on new clients I am constant adding to and reforming my process for getting that relationship started off on the right foot. As I am learning then so should you… the potential client. What follows is a list of questions I find very helpful during my initial discussion with a potential client. For those of you who are on the client side, take a minute to imagine how you might answer these questions and for those of you in the early stages of your career consider how these questions might help you.
The questions are in no particular order and I do not deem one more important the the next, some of them deal with design and some with development.
Q: What do you hope [...]

Several posts ago I spoke about a few tools that I am looking to try out in order to increase daily productivity and work flow. So with that I wanted to jump right in and see how Google Groups works and how it might compare to the tools created by 37Signals for client/project management and collaboration. It hit me that it would be interesting to start a group focusing on web design and development in Wisconsin. I know that there are a number of blogs, forums and other such places the many of us might frequent and interact with but I have yet to find one that is dedicated to the Wisconsin area, a place that I think could use a good information source on advancement in web design and development. So without wasting any time I created Wisconsin Web Design. I hope that we can start some useful discussion; [...]

You have come to the conclusion that your business might benefit from having an online presence and you are now faced with the task of figuring out how that might be done. This post actually started out, titled “You get what you pay for”, however I decided that I would make it a bit more beneficial by telling you what to look for, not what to look out for. I will try to cover the basics as well as elaborate a bit on the key points.
To start you will want to  create a short list of what exactly you are hoping this new online presence will accomplish. Is it to have an online presence for the simple reason that there is a chance your customer might be searching you out online and you do not want to disappoint them? In this day and age there is a very good chance [...]

Interestingly creating my first ecommerce site is what really got me interested in web design as more of a full time job. When I set out to create a ‘web shop’ for AS|ONE clothing over two years ago I knew what I was looking for, the hard part was finding something that was both manageable, easily integrated and most importantly affordable for a small business.
Here is a short list of what I was looking for in an ecommerce package:
Ease of Management - I need something that had a strong back end management system.
Inventory Control - Not to intensive but some inventory control was necessary.
Payment Integration - Ability to check out and accept payment easily.
Customization - I need it to look like my existing site.
Security - I wanted customers to feel safe when shopping.
It’s not the complete list but these are some of the features that I felt to be most [...]