The sad news? Well, it’s not often in this industry that an employee hangs around for more than a year or so. Let’s face it, Interactive work can have high turnover. Jason Bennett was our first employee, ever. He worked with  me when Workshed was still a home-based business, became our art director and oversaw the design and development of sites and projects for Subaru, The JGS Forward Thinking Museum and the re-branding of Lacamas Community Credit Union. Jason’s been our rock for four-plus years now. While we’re sad to see him go, we are excited for him and the new adventures he’s going to seek. And not to fret too much: he’ll also be contracting for us for awhile. Jason, we appreciate all you’ve given to Workshed over the years and hope you feel equally rewarded by your time spent here.

And to leave on a positive note: keep your eyes out for a fresh new look and feel for the Workshed web site as well as new hosting options. We promise, it’ll be cool.

Before:

After:

Workshed worked closely with Authentic Home over the course of four months to establish a strategy for linking a network of web sites together visually, strategically and technically.  Today, we finally get to see the results of everyone’s hard work as she officially announces her new sites.

The Authentic Home Network of sites is comprised of a content-managed Interior Design-focused site that promotes the services Authentic Home has to offer, a blog site that allows Kathy to keep her clients informed and share her expertise on Interior Design and last, but not least, a fully-featured e-commerce site that allows her to sell her custom line of interior and exterior paints, as well as custom fabric selection. The key to Authentic Home’s store is the ability for customers to see and purchase paint and fabric in moods, which are pre-matched sets of colors and patterns that match certain moods.

Workshed leveraged open source technologies for  the back ends of these sites, settling on the highly flexible and extensible Concrete5 CMS framework for the interior design site, the tried and true WordPress for the blog and Magento for the e-c0mmerce site. These technologies allow us to provide Authentic Home with a search engine friendly, easily manageable and extensible framework for the growth of not only Authentic Home’s Internet presence, but also for the growth of its business.

Workshed is proud to have been a part of this project and we look forward to seeing Authentic Home settle into its new home(s) on the Internet.

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/6zZCQJ9CNSxQPxAAHxS7

Thanks for Carma Zarosinski at Carma for Design for her help in making our space stand out!

http://www.vbjusa.com/stories/2009-07-10/the_personality_test.html

Event Date and Time: May 28th at the CW Chamber office from 4-5 pm.

Food and Drinks will be provided by Lacamas Community Credit Union.

When presented with all of the new hotness that you’re told to use by numerous pundits on all things technically hot, it’s important to look at your business model, your customers and your overall web strategy and decide whether or not it’s a good fit.  Sure, Twitter is a great tool for concise and quick updates and sharing of information, but are your customers likely to have Twitter accounts? Are they likely to want to follow you? Have you created a compelling reason for them to follow you?

The new business model as it relates to newer Internet technologies requires a certain amount of transparency with your business, and if you are not prepared to offer up some of that transparency (let your customers get to know you, to see inside, even to take part in making product and service decisions) and also to keep those updates flowing, chances are Twitter may be relegated to your hallway closet, along with that old Thighmaster and those dusty old LPs.

The same goes for social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace and even LinkedIn. Make sure you are prepared to take on the extra time and labor commitment necessary to keep those profiles updated and keep in touch with your customers.

Your best strategy is to have a strategy for your online presence. Find out about your customers, figure out your business needs and see where they intersect with available web technologies and trends. Taking a broad overview of such needs and capabilities can help you focus your energy and decide what options are most crucial and which ones are as destined for the Goodwill donation pile.

I can speak from experience — we’ve set up several profiles for Workshed, some of which are updated more than others. The other rub of Social Media is that it can take time to quantify the results of one’s efforts. We recently had a new client lead who stated they found us on Facebook. I’ve heard of other people getting some big ticket development jobs via Twitter.  But it takes time and dedication to reap the fruits of one’s labors. And patience.

Also, one must decide how much they want to leverage these technologies. Do you want to become at the top of the heap in your industry or market? Or do you want to simply build a stronger bond with your customers? It helps to  have a strategy in place so one can build a schedule and guidelines and stick to it.