Two separate customer service issues today… both drove me a little nuts. Rant #1: Endless voice prompts. Called PayPal in regards to a transaction. After entering my account info, I get dumped into the voice prompting system — “you can say, ‘payments,’ ‘account issues,’ or ‘refunds.’” Aha… I’ve been in this trap before, and I [...]

In my work as a consultant, it’s important for me to adjust to the speed of the client. If I go too fast, problems appear. Sometimes I lose them in concepts that seem pretty basic to me, but are new to them. Then later, I have to back up and go over the concepts again. [...]

I hope I’m not being snarky here, but even the big guys have Web problems sometimes. For those who care, the error is a Windows server error, probably from an asp.net application that they’re upgrading (or recently upgraded) and some essential bit of code is missing. It happens, but we’ll see how long it takes [...]

Among the first things young photographers are told is get close to your subject and fill up the frame. Good advice for framing photos to hang on your wall, bad advice for Web/design usage. The new rules, when shooting for general Web site usage: group your main subject, but shoot wider shots with plenty of [...]

I’m making a lot of WordPress sites right now for small clients, and every time I set one up, I have to remember all the steps. So, this post has a selfish goal: I need to create a list anyway, and figured I might as well share. I’m assuming you know how to set up [...]

Your Home page is the most important page of your Web site, and not just because it’s by far the most visited. It’s where first impressions are formed (the oft-quoted “where am I and what can I do here?“). It must highlight your business goals, address customer needs, be interesting, have SEO content, and change [...]