Workshop – 2/6
- Pre Launch of Kristi’s site
- Steps to take a site from Kickoff Meeting to Template up faster than a speeding bullet! Ninja quick.
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Meagan Vitek
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Becky DeGrossa
Photo selection process
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Suzanne Neuman
This is a template for what I have been sending clients:
For IMAGES, we suggest you search on istockphotos.com. Attached you will find a spreadsheet which you can use to let us know your image selections. (Please do NOT purchase the images. We will purchase them in the correct size for your site, usually small, or x-small.)
To see the cost of the photo, click on Show $USD Pricing (see image below) This will change the price from credits to dollars.
We recommend that all your images share a common theme – nature, sad/distressed people, or happy people, etc.
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Becky DeGrossa
Need Better Process for host account balancing
We just got an entire hosting account shut down via Bluehost because our practicebuildingbook.com account is again over the allotted file size.
We need to get this account down to normal size — probably need to move a bunch of sites out of it.
This set of sites that are down include 8 client sites, our Letsgeterdone site, and 16 development sites.
On 11/19, Daryl had got our file sizes down from 204k to 183,573, But today (12/7), its now up to 235k. So they shut us down — no warning this time — no date by which you can have it down.
So, I’m proposing that Daryl have a weekly task of checking the file sizes in all bluehost accounts to see where we’re at. And balancing them.
PC’s will need to check with Daryl before they tell the developer what hosting account to put the site in.
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Meagan Vitek
Thursday Workshop 12/5/13
Ideas from each person on how to improve PC process:
1. Manage client expectations – trying to manage customer service with reality – defining the expectations
2. Better communication – getting it right the first time and understanding – greater visibility on developer process
3. Development standards
4. Time estimates for developer tasks
5. Basic WordPress training
6. Themes – more definition – process for communicating the theme appearance to clients
7. Need testing & qa process before going live
– Smooth go live process that is documented and adhered to
8. Clear client communication regarding hours and cost
– Initially
– Ongoing
9. Process for screening/testing out developers
10. Being more realistic with each task and time
11. Improve photo selection process
12. Remove burden from Becky to free her up for marketing
13. Better communication with client
14. Standard timeline and deadlines for projects – give ourselves and our clients a schedule to go by
– Time estimates for developer tasks
15. Better process for assigning developers to a project
16. Training hub
17. Definition and process for free report
18. Communication with other PCs
19. Training on Mailpoet and Elasticmail
20. Communication between writers and PCsThe Top 5 Issues are:
14. Standard timeline and deadlines for projects – give ourselves and our clients a schedule to go by
– Time estimates for developer tasks
3. Development standards
7. Need testing & qa process before going live
– Smooth go live process that is documented and adhered to
8. Clear client communication regarding hours and cost
– Initially
– Ongoing
16. Training hubBy the end of next week’s meeting (12/12), we need to complete #14:
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Standard timeline and deadlines for projects – give ourselves and our clients a schedule to go by
– Time estimates for developer tasks
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Becky DeGrossa
Sorry, must have been unclear. The top 5 issues are the first 5 that we will tackle. If we can get #1 completed by the end of next week’s meeting (12/12), that will be great.
Also — is 16 about putting all training in one place? I think so, but wanted to make sure!
Thanks!
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Meagan Vitek
Becky – so this week we are tackling #14 (which is the top issue for next week)
Yes, #16 is having all training in one place (the P2..Woot!)
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Standard timeline and deadlines for projects – give ourselves and our clients a schedule to go by
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Juliette Cook
QA Testing before a website goes LIVE – We should be using 404 redirected, the plug-in for wordpress
Testing isn’t fun, I am going to be honest. I have to go through the entire site and make sure all links and buttons are in working order. I have found 404 error pages that leave a site sort of ‘broken’ and this is not good for google/SEO etc. So I found http://wordpress.org/plugins/404-redirected/ We should use this as a standard plug-in. Why not? Need to know thoughts here. Won’t this save us time? Testing must be accounted for in the Standard Timeline – it is TIME consuming – link, bugs, and more fixing adds up so we can discuss this more in workshops and in the overall schedule, budget and resource allocation.
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Becky DeGrossa
Workshop: Standard timeline for projects
I’d like to put a scheduled timeline to our STWP projects.
There are tasks in each of our projects that we can control (such as getting the development environment set up), and then other tasks that are under the client’s control (theme choice, content creation–IF they are the ones creating it).
In all the client engagements I’ve managed at IBM, there was a project plan that had due dates for each task. Did we always make it? No. Did we get it done faster and with less cost because there was an expectation that we’d hit those dates? Yes.
Most of us respond better to a timeline, and our clients will, too. If we lay out a schedule clearly, and let them know when each of their tasks are DUE, we will get better response from them.
I’d like for us to hold a workshop where we put a schedule in place for the entire standard project. We’ll choose a fictitious start date (like Jan 15th) and then determine all other dates from there. This will be added to the project template so that you can enter a real date for a kickoff meeting and then everything will flow from there.
This schedule can then be the basis for setting client expectations after the kickoff meeting.
Thoughts?
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Juliette Cook
In the template currently on LGED can we input estimated time to tasks before this workshop – if so, how can i do it? When I enter tasks currently (the old school CW way) I always put in an estimated time guideline for the developer. If this has already been done, where can I see it because when I look at the template currently it lists tasks not yet categorized. Still learning …..
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Becky DeGrossa
I’m not sure. Can you ask Meagan? Maybe the two of you can put your heads together and see if it can be done.
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Becky DeGrossa
PC Workshops – Purpose and Topics
The purpose of the PC (and other soon to come) workshops is that we’ll use these to identify areas needing improvements, figure out solutions together, implement them, and in this way, build our processes and procedures so that we all have what we need to do our jobs well!
These workshop will follow a process I learned from Chet Holmes (great book – The Ultimate Sales Machine). If you’re interested in the workshop process, only, read Chapter 3.
For the first meeting (on December 5th) we’ll do this:
- Each of us will privately take 3 minutes and jot down 3 ideas to improve the PC process. Each of you will have different ideas based on your experiences. We want to hear them all.
- We will jot all of these down and number them.
- Based on impact and urgency, we’ll prioritize them.
- Each week, we’ll take one of these topics and tackle it. Some of the work may require work to be done outside the meeting, but other issues can be resolved, addressed, and a solution documented in the meeting.
- The end result of each workshop will be that we establish and document a procedure for handling the situation in question.
Topics that the team has already identified and already scheduled (note that after the start of our meeting, we may no longer feel that these are the top issues based on progress over the last couple of weeks, but we can also stick to this if it makes sense)
Date: Thursday December 5Topic: WordPress Themes for ClientsDate: Thursday December 12Topic: Hosting Sites and Resource AllocationDate: Thursday December 19, 9:30-11:00Topic: WordPress Developer Protocols & Pre-Live ChecklistThanks, in advance, for all of your genius help in making us rock as a company!
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Juliette Cook
Fiverr – for Logos and Graphics
Hi all
If a client wants a quickie ‘logo’ that doesn’t cost hundred of dollars, we are charging clients $50 so that we go onto this service, look for a top rated designer and there is usually a quick turn around. Make sure the designer has good ratings. I have had some bad experiences and also look a how long it will take a designer. the more specific you are about what kind of logo you want the better. Colors, background colors and styles that you like will get the results you need for a happy client.
We can also include this in a workshop regarding design and colors for clients.
the site is: http://fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-logo-design/#layout=auto&jls_sca349_1_auto=1
and becky made a screencast:
Here’s how: http://screencast.com/t/fkVT5m26pYW
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Juliette Cook
Placing a form on a wordpress site, estimate, production and testing
hi all,
just like we did for the STWP kickoff check list, my client wants to put a questionnaire on his site and get results instantly. I need to know what this takes – manpower – how many hours to build, test – I am trying to give him an estimate before going into production. Can you help, WP developers? Is there a plug-in for this functionality?
maybe a workshop on this because this could be a great upsell. upsell upsell! hell yeah.
thank you.
juliette
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Juan Villegas
mm a hand-made, simple (name, email, question..) form using ajax and styled according to the site may take 3-4 hours. results would be emailed to the wordpress site owner account.
another possibility is linking a 3rd party form, like aweber/mailchimp. Those usually give you a code that you just copy/paste into the side. Its only html. 1 hour to generate the form in Aweber, copy the code, style it a little, etc.
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Becky DeGrossa
Juliette – putting it on, if he has it all together and doesn’t make changes, is probably about an hour. Our form (on CW site) is done via Visual Form Builder Pro – a paid plugin. He may want to buy it (you can look up the cost) as it ends up looking pretty good compared to other contact form software.
I think we talked about this on his call, but I don’t remember the details of how this will be used. Will they just fill it out and then they get the results and he gets the results? And then they can connect separately from the form submit?
If he wants an interactive form where the form scores things and gives them some indication, right after they’ve answered questions, online, then that is an entirely different thing than what we have. Just wanted to make sure to mention that since I think that an interactive form was mentioned on our call.
Meagan was the one who created our form on CW site, by the way 🙂 It’s pretty easy to do.
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Juliette Cook
Workshop – Hosting, Email Hosting and how it all works
Hi all,
We need to have a workshop about our hosting services and how they work. I have a client that wants to know how Host Gator (for example – could be bluehost too – handles email – for example, is there an easy pathway to check her email? Can you check host gator email on a mobile app?
These are questions I didn’t know the answer to – so it would be helpful to be more informed.
thanks.
juliette
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Juan Villegas
All webhosts offer a webmail service, that works just like a gmail client: they give you an url where you enter username and password and log in to your mailbox.
If the webhost gives you the smtp server, you can always link your @domain.com account to outlook express or also gmail.
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Juliette Cook
i am wondering how hostgator does it – specifically can a user get their hostgator email from their phone?
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Becky DeGrossa
In my experience, none of the email interfaces that come from these hosting accounts are particularly user-friendly. In addition, they have to go to another place to see their email.
My suggestion would be that all of our clients have some friendlier email — usually one they’re already using — such as gmail, yahoo, etc. and that we forward their name@sitename.com email to them at their gmail/yahoo id.
All of you PCs are doing this already. You all have either a page1pros.org id or a counselingwise.com id and we forward your email to your gmail id. You can tell what is “work” related email compared to personal email, and you can respond to or author emails from your “work” id.
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Juan Villegas
take a look at: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/email/setting-up-email-for-the-apple-iphone
basically, they give you the configuration parameters and you use the Mail program in your ithing (iphone, ipad, etc) or even in your desktop client (outlook, thunderbird..)
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Suzanne Neuman is discussing. 
Meagan Vitek and 
Becky DeGrossa are discussing. 
Juliette Cook are discussing. 
Juan Villegas are discussing. 
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