Launched a new site this past week for Flats Organic Pizzeria in Worcester, MA. They’re a one location outfit right now, but they’re looking to aggressively epxand over the next few years. They saw our work with b.good and contacted us because of it. It’s nice to get a referral that comes directly from the work you’ve done. It validates what you’ve been doing.
So while we work already with a few restaurants, we signed Flats up as our first official oRestaurantdesign.com customer. Hopefully we can help Flats achieve the success they are looking for. For now though if you’re in the area you should go check them out. Their food is all from local and organic sources, and they have a SLO policy (Sustainable, local, organic). It’s already getting raves.
Check them out!
Monday again. It’s a conspiracy. Every week starts with one. Fishy if you ask me.
Today I’ve got a bunch of work to do. I’ve not only got to do my social media and blogging for work, but I have to get a new website into our oRestaurantdesign.com product. Working on restaurant websites is always hard. I get so hungry. I like the design of this one though. The owners really had a good grasp on the feel they wanted, and I think we executed it well. I always enjoy working with passionate people, who aren’t afraid to have ideas, and are growth minded on top of that.
It’s kind of funny because this place is essentially a Pizza place. They focus on sustainable, local, and organic foods. It’s environmentally friendly organic pizza. I’ll post the link to the site once we have it up. I don’t want people thinking their current site is in any way related to me. It’s pretty bad. Anyway the funny part is that a local pizza place is normally my example of the kind of people that don’t need a website.
For instance in my neighborhood there is a local pizza shop. Eddies. It’s been there forever apparently, everyone in the neighborhood uses it. Once a year they MIGHT send a kid out with new menus to walk the 4 main streets of the neighborhood and put menus on people’s doors. They have no interest in a website. Why would they? Half the neighborhood, half their customers know their number by heart, or even have it programmed into their phones. It’s pizza. Who needs a menu for pizza and subs? 90% of what they sell are pepperoni pizza’s, italian hoggies, and 2 liters of soda. They are happy with their market, have no plans for expansion, and don’t spend a dime on marketing. their business is steady.
They’re the kind of business who I understand doesn’t need a website, and is pointless to waste time on them.
So it’s kind of funny that one of our early customers of oRestaurantdesign.com is a Pizza place. There’s a difference though. The owners of this restaurant are not in a neighborhood, they’re in a semi-urban area, and are focusing on college students. On top of that they’re looking to expand. They have one location now, but they want to have 5-7 within a few years. They are looking for investors, and will need to communicate who they are over the internet. They’re a perfect customer, they need to not spend an arm and a leg, but they need and are interested in leveraging the internet, as they see it as a great way to communicate who they are to investors, as well as communicating what they are peddling to customers.
Anyway it’s kind of funny that my prime example of the kind of company that is impossible to sell a website to is a Pizza place, and I’m now working on the restaurant for a Pizza place.
Except this one looks cool, and has the real potential to turn it’s owners into millionares, and the other one will pay a very modest wage for the remainder of the owners lives. Each to their own I guess.
I honestly don’t remember what I did yesterday. Is that bad?
I think I didn’t get much sleep the past couple of nights, a combination of staying up too late, being sick, the cat catching a mouse, and kids waking me up to goll darn early.
I mean really. Why can’t my five year old just get up on her own and go downstairs. She knows how to turn the TV on, she just hates to go down there alone while everyone is asleep. It’s killing me. 6:30am after I stay up till 3am and she is poking me in the eyes telling me to get up.
Not cool.
Anyway today I managed to get her to go wake up her mother who was sleeping on the bed in the baby’s room from whenever he woke up last, I think he got up four or five times last night. Another issue.
Then I managed to sleep till after 10am. Lazy? Maybe. Still if I had gotten up at 6:30 I wouldn’t still be awake now, and wouldn’t have been at all productive today. Better to get a good 3-4 hours in than nothing at all.
I decided for the afternoon today to head back down to the Morning Glory Coffeehouse here in Morningside. Fresh air, sunshine, coffee. Good stuff. Made some progress on the OrcaPack website. I think it’s going to take me longer than I thought, but I’m progressing. I have all the content written, but getting it into the pages, along with graphics and images is taking longer than I had expected to start with. I think though that once I get really going it’ll be faster. It’s mostly just getting the right stuff prepared at this point. I still hope I can get it live by the end of the week and we can start showing it off to people. Our current sites are just horrible compared to these, and I’m really enjoying working on our own stuff, rather than on stuff for other people.
Normally I blog in the morning, but since I woke up at 10 that was kind of shot, and i’m doing it now. I’ll do a few more things, and finish up my day and head home. I have to cook dinner tonight. Orange Cheek’AN. I’m not sure what the actual protein will be. Probably those veggie chicken strips.
After my last post, one of my good friends Shawn Rodgers an amazing photographer working through the website Ovation Images remarked on my use of the word Douchebag.
“douchebag!? You put the word “douchebag” in your business blog? I laughed good. But I don’t think I’d have the balls to do that.”
I respect that position, in fact it’s the one I’m used to from people, but it’s just not me. I tell it like it is and I’m not afraid to use slightly naughty words. Oh I’m probably not going to start talking about Mung (If you don’t know what Mung is don’t look it up. Seriously, just don’t do it. I’m not even linking it.) in any kind of seriousness, but I refuse to keep a stick up my butt regarding my use of language, even with clients.
Of course I’m not going to swear like a pirate for no good reason. I like to think I swear or use words with purpose. If you don’t like my use of the word ‘douchebag’ then you’re probably not going to want to do business with me for any length of time. I’m good at what I do, and I’ve pulled lots of companies out of the fire, but if you ask them, they’ll let you know I don’t hesitate with my opinion or the truth.
If a ‘fuck’ is warranted I’ll even pull that puppy out of my toolbox. Oh yeah. F-Bomb. Went there. Suck on that one, douchebags.
But seriously, I’m not normally a swearer (unlike my wife), and I don’t encourage it in normal conversation. I was very proud however when my daughter swore for the first time. She had just recently turned 4, I believe, and was playing with her My Little Pony’s in the playroom. She had never sworn before, and never even repeated any swears that came out of my wife or my lips in the house. She was never a mimic. So she was back there and she was using the magnet in the pony’s foot on the Magna Doodle to make “Pony Tracks” as the pony’s foot magnet would mark the magna doodle. *Smack smack smack smack* OOOWWWWW!
I turn my head and see my daughter whipping the My Little Pony across the room full force into the wall, and sucking on her finger. I say “Honey what happened!?!?” and she turns to me and says “That fucking pony bit me!”
I kept myself from laughing, and explained to her that she wasn’t allowed to use that word, and that it was an adult word. Still, I thought to myself “Yeah that was a pretty appropriate use of the swear word.” and was secretly proud.
Sometimes you just need to say a ‘bad word’ like douchebag. Sometimes that fucking pony bites you.
And seriously, sometimes that guy who has your other ear is a douchebag. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Just because some is capable of giving advice, doesn’t mean they’re capable of giving good advice. I’ve had to counter so much horrific advice from other people in the past. Sometimes it’s staggeringly BAD advice. Sometimes it’s advice that’s just ignorant of how the technology works. Sometimes it’s good advice, but coming from someone with a not good ulterior motive.
There are too many instances to possibly name, but I’ll give one of my favorites, because it repeats, and it’s one that my good ole buddy Shawn is guilty of with Ovation Images.
Shawn, way back, asked me what people thought of music on websites. I said that multiple surveys have pretty much conclusively shown that people hate forced music on websites. Depending on how the question is asked 80-90% of users actively dislike when music or sound is forced on them from a website. Yes, they like to be able to turn it off, the worst is when they can’t easily see how to turn it off. If you have music or sound, and don’t have a stop button clearly visible above the fold, you are absolutely going to lose users to your site.
Remember when Flash ads started going everywhere like on news sites, and they had sound? That didn’t last long. You couldn’t turn them off, and the sites did not like what they did to their userbase. So what happens now? You have to actually click ON the add, in order to get the sound to start. They’ll give you video, but the sound you need to say “yes give me sound”.
“But all the other photographer sites have music.” says Shawn, confirming that the majority of the photographer community has either not done a lick of discovery on their users, or are simply going along with the crowd.
The simple fact is that people are already listening to music on their computers when they surf, or they are somewhere that they can’t play music, like at work, and really don’t want some folksy tunes suddenly to come out of their computers as they quickly jam the close window button.
So on one side Shawn is hearing from some other Photographers on a Photography forum or somewhere that they have to have music on their website, the website template company makes it standard, and then he looks at me and I say “Don’t do it man, don’t do it.” and once again, even a good friend… listens to the Douchebags.
I’d love to see a tracker on that site and get a percentage of visitors who leave within 5 seconds, and a percentage who turn the music off inside 10 seconds. I bet it’s pretty high. All the statistical evidence would indicate it would be.
I have more stories. Lots more. It’s been a lesson in my life that just because you know what to do better than someone else, doesn’t mean people will automatically listen to you, and if they don’t know what to do, then they basically have your word against someone elses, and if they think you’re both experts it can be a tough decision. If they think the Douchebag is more of an expert…
Well then they’re fucked.