Day 36: Prospects

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

Today was one of those days where your hair is perfect, your shoes match, and things really seem to be coming together. Okay… maybe not the part about the hair and shoes. But we had a pretty good business day.

We got a call from the Yukon Chamber of Commerce. They said they need someone to develop their website, and they also need someone to do support for their computer systems. While we’re not really interested in the second part (we’ve told him we’ll try to find someone else for that… any of y’all interested?), we are eager to do their website. Billy and I have talked over some ideas, thought about some designs, and plan to do a mock-up to send him after we receive their informational brochure (probably tomorrow). This seems like a good way to get our name out to the businesses here in town, since many of them will make contact with the Chamber of Commerce at some point. We’re excited about this opportunity.

We also wrote back to the manager at the Yukon Progress newspaper. We gave her more information on Smart Goat, told her we’d look forward to talking to them once they are ready to set up a website… and we also pointed her to our pricing page.

… And, oh yeah, we put together our pricing page. We put a lot of thought into how we wanted to present this, because (as we mention on that page), every web project is different. But I feel like many people will be too afraid of unknown costs if we don’t at least give them a ballpark figure. We hope this gives them an idea of our prices without going into the detailed formulas (3 pages + 2 pictures + 1 form = x) some folks use. We don’t want to give people a package setup instead of what they actually need.

The pricing page has a similar format to our portfolio page, but it also has Flash headers to add a little interest. I’d like to try some different text effects on something sometime, but I didn’t feel like scrolling text and the like would really be effective as headers.

Finally, a small complaint. We joined the OKCPCUG to network… and from the wording on their website, it sounds like that’s why most people join. But how can a PC group not have a email list, or an online discussion group, or something?! How can we pass along possible leads (Chamber of Commerce computer support) if there’s not an immediate way to contact those who might be interested?

Rant over. Things are looking good here. Even if nothing else pans out, at least we’re making Smart Goat a better site.