I recently took my car in for an oil change. They said it would take an hour and asked if I wanted to wait. No problem, I said. I had my laptop and the lobby at the Honda shop has free WiFi. I just plugged in, fired up the VPN, and worked for the next hour and a half. My only other options would have been to sit around waiting or get shuttled back and forth to pick up the car later in the day. These options just seems like a waste of time to me. You see, I am a frequent telecommuter. On the days I am not working in the office I am usually plugged in from home or the neighborhood coffee shop. If your employer and job situation allow it, I highly recommend it. Telecommuting is ideal for web designers, developers and creatives who want to change up their work environment or go completely nomadic. Let me tell you why…

Benefits of telecommuting

• Environmentally friendly
  The average American commutes on average an hour a day (PDF). Telecommuting reduces that to zero minutes and zero miles, and spares the earth, your car, and your mental health the extra wear-and-tear from a daily commute.
• More productive
  Some of us are simply more productive from home. Maybe we are introverts, or dislike cube farms, or perhaps we just prefer the work-environment we’ve crafted at our home office. For those of us prefer working from home, a recent study shows telecommuting makes us more productive.
• Save yourself and your employer some money
  If you aren’t taking up space at an office, that equals less overhead for your employer. As a trade-off, your employer might be willing to kick down a few incentives like paying for your cell phone or Internet connection. It’s also possible to write-off your home office on your taxes, but that gets a little murky so be sure to do your research first.
• Focus on work and get the laundry done
  One of the benefits of telecommuting from home is that you are actually at home. You can take care of those pesky chores that normally don’t get done during the week when you are not there. Domestic tasks like doing the laundry, washing the dishes, and taking the dog out for a walk, are ways to break up the day and be productive on more than just the work front. And as most web designers, developers, and creatives have likely experienced, taking a break when creatively blocked often gives us a fresh new perspective that gets us through the problem.
• Define your own space
  Telecommuting offers web designers, developers and creatives the autonomy to define their own creative space. Our work environment is perhaps one of the most influential factors in our ability to churn out great creative work. At home we can dial in the work space we want without the confines of an office space. Telecommuting also allows us to switch up our work environment and collaborate alongside others simply by toting our laptop to any coffee shop or similar space with WiFi.

Tools for telecommuting

• Online meetings
  The two apps we use most for online meetings are Skype and GoToMeeting. They each have advantages over the other, which is by we use both. The key features that make our online meetings successful are group video chat and screen sharing. When telecommuting, it is important to get face time with your team to make sure everyone is looking at the same thing. Web designers and creatives tend to communicate more visually than others. An online screen sharing app helps to easily communicate visual ideas. Web developers tend to hunker down and push through what task sits before them. Getting everyone together for some online face-time helps keep from veering off course by checking in with their team throughout the development process.
• File access
  When working from home there is a good chance the files you need to access are sitting on a server inside a firewalled office. A VPN can get you through the firewall, while a Remote Desktop client can get you logged into a computer on the other side. Talk to your IT department about utilizing a VPN because clients usually vary with the type of hardware being used on the network. Another way to get at files is to use a cloud based file service, such as DropBox, or use an online versioning application such as GitHub. DropBox is a great option for web designers and creatives, because the larger storage amounts make it more convenient for passing around large image files. GitHub is usually the top choice for web developers, who need to access and collaborate on the same code base, while also keeping a history of development activity.
• Time, task and project management
  For web designers, developers and creatives who need online time, task and project management software, I’d like to make a quick plug for our own online project management software, Intervals. However, the advantage to using any online software for time tracking and task management is that you can keep track of your day-to-day workflow and communicate with your team members from a web browser. If you are telecommuting and collaborating with a team, some type of online project management software is essential. There are plenty of online apps to choose from, so take your time researching each one until you find one that fits your workflow best.

Online security while telecommuting

Telecommuting brings with it a high risk of data loss as a result of theft. The importance of security can not be stressed enough when opting to telecommute, especially if you work in an industry that handles sensitive data. There have been too many stories in the news lately about stolen laptops containing personal data and sessions being hijacked when using public WiFi and unencrypted connections. If you are telecommuting from a public space, be sure to incorporate the following security tips:

• Use a VPN and RDP Client
  A Virtual Private Network (VPN) establishes a secure connection between your computer and the remote network at your office. A VPN is a must if you need to access servers or computers at your office that are behind a firewall. A VPN is also useful if your company owns servers that are only accessible from your office. In addition to a VPN, a Remote Desktop Client can be used to establish a Remote Desktop Connection to an idle computer at the office. Typically a RDP connection works best when used in conjunction with a VPN.
• Use SSL for web sites and email
  Use SSL for surfing the web and checking email whenever possible. This means make sure the web site you are on has ‘https://’ in front of it. We are in the age of the cloud and most of the web-apps we use will be protected by SSL. By using SSL for web sites and email, you are ensuring that data being transferred to and from your laptop is encrypted.
• Protect sensitive data if you think your laptop might get stolen
  Short from locking up your laptop with a cable, nothing is going to stop a thief from walking off with it. If you decide to load sensitive information on your laptop, encrypt the data and keep it close to you at all times.
• Use a hotspot
  Most smartphones can be used as a mobile hot spot. If not, buy one. Then lock it down and take it with you. This way you can still work from places that don’t have WiFi and you can trust that your data is protected. And with 4g available in most major cities, the speed shouldn’t be a hindrance (unlike 3g).

Photo credit: mccun934

Tags: creatives, developers, telecommuting, web designers

Startups and small businesses have one thing in common, they both demand a lot from the owners and stakeholders — a higher than average time commitment, a high level of performance and sustained levels of mental and physical stamina. These demands can and often do burn people out entrepreneurs and their employees. We need to stay mentally alert and physically healthy to avoid fatigue and burnout. In short, we need to constantly rejuvenate our body and mind to protect ourselves from the negative impacts a startup or small business culture can have on us. At Pelago, we work hard to make Intervals the popular online time, task and project management application it is today. Here are some practical tips on how to keep yourself healthy in a startup or small business environment, based on what we’ve learned along the way, and continue to learn each day.

Diet and nutrition

Almost every startup and tech company I have ever worked at kept a stash of soda and candy in a drawer somewhere inside the office walls. This is one of the worst things you can do for yourself and your team. Sure, it motivates everyone to keep working because, hey, it’s free soda, but relying on sugar to push through the long hours is going to burn you out in the long run. Your body simply can’t sustain its defenses against the ups and downs triggered by repeated sugar intake. Dump out the sugar bins and fill them with healthier alternatives. Any type of snacks and drinks without sugar in them is a great place to start. Refueling on healthier drinks and snacks will even you out and give you deeper wells of energy to draw from.

Physical exercise

The simple act of getting up and moving around is the best thing we can do for our bodies. The amount of time we spend sitting has been recognized by researchers as one of the most detrimental factors affecting our long-term health. In other words, sitting for too long will kill you. The least you need to do is get up out of your chair and move around every hour or two — walk around the office and stretch your arms and legs. Want to take it to the next level? Spend some time at the gym or ride your bike to work. Again, research shows that daily exercise does wonders, and that riding our bikes to work can save us billions in health care costs. Given the amount of strain a startup or small business can put on our bodies — from bad posture to sedentary work habits — we need to counter it with as much physical exercise as we can manage.

Mental exercise

Our minds can become quite tired when stuck in the same mental rut for too long. We’ve all experienced the epiphanies that suddenly occur after walking away from a difficult problem. Our minds need the same amount of rest and exercise our bodies do. Take breaks from the monitor and look out the window at something far away, letting your eyes adjust and stretch their focusing mechanism. Go sit outside somewhere and relax for twenty minutes. Studies have shown that one twenty minute break each day can lower blood pressure more effectively than medicine. Practice different breathing exercises to calm the mind down. Startups and small businesses are breeding grounds for stress and anxiety, which both are root causes of many physical ailments. Learning how to cope with the mental strain of a fast-paced work environment will not only keep you sharp, it will keep you healthy.

The holistic trinity

It is important to look at your business as a living and breathing entity comprised of more than just the sum of its parts. If the sole focus is on throughput, you are going to burn out. The time and effort you put in to each day is a renewable resource, which is why you need to continually renew yourself with more than just eight hours of sleep every night. The human body is often times compared with an engine. The metaphor follows that if you take good care of your body and mind it will run better and last longer. You are the most valuable asset of any startup or small business, which will put a lot of miles on your body. Don’t let yourself become burned out from nutritional, physical, or mental neglect. All three of these are important aspects of our well-being and need to be a focus of our day-to-day work flow. The more preventive measures we take to keep ourselves healthy, the more our startup or small business will benefit.

Photo credit: anacharlottee

As any freelancer and web design and development agency owner is well aware, regulating revenue is a difficult task. Ebbs and flows of revenue have lead to the expression “feast or famine,” the roller coaster phenomenon that occurs without any seasonality or predictability. During the many years we designed web sites and developed web-based software, we had our share of ups and downs. But, we also had some success in regulating uneven revenue. Here are three business practices you can adopt to keep your web design and development business revenue steady.

Offer clients a prepaid retainer

Most companies have a web site, but they don’t have a web designer or developer to maintain the web site. Offering these companies a prepaid retainer for some of your billable hours benefits both you and your client, especially when offering a discount along with the retainer. You benefit by getting money up front and your client benefits by getting a discount, along with the promise that you will be there for them when they need web site design or maintenance work. It may not be glorious work, but it does result in steady and reliable revenue.

Partner with creative agencies

There are creative agencies in every metropolitan area of the world. Even small cities will have half a dozen agencies each inside their city limits. Most creative agencies focus heavily on the creative side of the web design process, churning out web sites as part of a larger array of services offered to their clients. However, many creative agencies won’t have the web development resources in-house and will often outsource the development work to freelancers or web development shops. Partnering with creative agencies will bring in repeat work, good budgets, and spare you from the client interaction process.

Encourage repeat clients

The best clients are the ones who keep coming back to you to design and develop additional web projects. A repeat relationship begins with your first client project. If you do good work, deliver on time and under budget, and most importantly, build a good report with your clients, they won’t be able to resist coming back to you with more work. Repeat clients are the ones who will tell you what projects they have coming down the pipeline, when they’ll need your resources, and how much they have to budget. Working with the same client on multiple web design and development projects is one of the best ways to maintain a steady flow of income, and spares you from having to drum up work with new clients.

Get creative…

You are working in a creative industry. Regulating your revenue is a business problem that requires a creative solution. As long as you are using your web design and development skills to help businesses solve their business problems online, turn some of that expertise inward and find more creative ways to address revenue shortages. The possibilities — beyond the three revenue strategies I’ve discussed — are limitless.

Photo credit: Mr Michael Phams

The team here at Pelago has been designing and developing web sites and web-based applications together for eleven years now — and individually since long before that. In this time, we’ve worked with a broad spectrum of clients. While we’ve been fortunate to work with a long list of stellar clients, we have had our share of soured client relationships. Regardless of how it went down, the red flags were there in the beginning.

Looking back, the red flags seem so obvious, but the promise of new work and lack of experience can blind us to warning signs. So before you take on your next new client, look out for these red flags. I’ve also included some snippets from our contract, which can be downloaded and used for free, to illustrate how you can address difficult clients with a stronger contract.

All the rights

It’s a common misunderstanding that when a client pays for a web site to be designed and developed they are also paying for the full exclusive rights to your work. This is simply not the case. When a client hires a web designer or developer they are paying for the digital rights to your output, not the full exclusive rights to reuse or resell your work. If a client asks for exclusive rights to your work, it means they are asking you to hand over your designs and your code, never to be used by you again. While there is nothing wrong with doing this, it usually requires the client pay you a much larger fee. Few clients, however, are willing to pay more and will expect you to amend the contract without any additional compensation. Web designers and developers should not hand over rights so quickly, and for good reason. Web designers and developers tend to reuse design elements and code snippets — intellectual property developed over time, the basic building blocks of our portfolios and code libraries. Don’t let a greedy client take that from you.

Your contract with the client should have a clause that reads something like this:

COMPANY shall retain all right, title and interest, including all copyright, patent rights and trade secret rights in the Background Technology…

And if you would like to give the client more rights, which is helpful when dealing with a web site or web application that will need to be maintained, a contractual clause like this can suffice:

COMPANY hereby grants to CLIENT, to the extent it is legally able to do so, a nonexclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to use the Background Technology in the Web Application Project developed for and delivered to CLIENT under this Agreement.

Bug free for life

Bugs are just one of the realities of web site and application development that must be addressed, sooner rather than later. No amount of testing is going to eradicate every bug, whether it be a simple web site or complex web-based application. Once you and the client understand the reality that the final product will have bugs, you need to agree on a warranty arrangement. At Pelago, all of our contracts are hourly-based time and materials contracts, so we simply do our post-launch bug fixing under the same hourly contract we used to manage and develop the original project. If you do flat bids, it can be a good practice to fix bugs during a limited time after a web site is launched. But it’s also important to agree on a cut-off date for said warranty work.

When working with a client on a flat-bid project, there needs to be an understanding that you, the web designer or web developer, will be further compensated for working out kinks and rifts. What the client considers ‘bugs’ are often times a misinterpretation of their business logic. Don’t let a client bog you down with change requests masquerading as bug fixes. Let them know you will warranty your work for a set amount of time after which the business arrangement will need to be re-negotiated.

Providing a warranty clause is important for two reasons. One, it stops clients from trying to get free work done under the guise that it “should have been done right the first time,” and two, it stresses the necessity of performing QA during web site development. Here is an example of a “no warranty” clause from one of our contracts:

The developer content furnished under this agreement is provided on an “as is” basis, without any warranties or representations expressed, implied, or statutory; including, without limitation, warranties of quality, performance,
noninfringement, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. COMPANY does not warrant that the operation of the site will be continual, uninterrupted, or error free

To include a warranty period, the contract can include instructions to this effect:

COMPANY warrants for that 30 days following acceptance of the web site by CLIENT, the web site will be free from material reproducible programming errors and defects in workmanship and materials, and will substantially conform to the Specifications in the Development Plan when maintained and operated in accordance with COMPANY’S instructions.

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Web site today

Your time is your most valuable asset. You only have so much of it to give, so you want to give it where it counts — paying client work. If a client tells you they will pay you later, for whatever reason, kindly explain to them you will begin work once you receive your first payment. If the client then goes on to explain that their deadline is concrete and that they must begin right this instant, but pay you later, walk away. This is the sign of a Narcissistic client that will continue to put their priorities before your own. While there is a pretty good chance you will receive your first payment from this type of client, there is a significantly higher chance you won’t see the last.

Be sure to provide the client with a payment schedule that clearly dictates milestones and the payments required at each milestone. The first and the last payment will give you the most leverage because there are tangible deliverables associated with each one. The client has the most at stake during the beginning and the end, which gives you the upper hand when dealing with a difficult or unethical client.

In the terms and conditions of your contract, include a clause that reads:

CLIENT agrees to pay total fees as described in the PAYMENT SCHEDULE.

And if you really want to get your point across, include a clause for late payment of fees. It can read something like this:

Payment is due and payable upon presentation of an invoice. Delinquent bills will be assessed a $100 charge if payment is not received within 30 days of the due date. If an amount remains delinquent 30 days after its due date, an additional 1.5% penalty will be added for each month of delinquency. The grant of any license or right of copyright is conditioned on receipt of full payment

Discussing payment schedules with a client can be the most uncomfortable exchange of the contractual process, however, it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as being stuck in a bad client relationship — one where you’ve fulfilled your contractual obligations and the client isn’t paying. You will have wasted time in doing the work and will have to waste even more time persuading the client to pay.

A large stake of uncertainty in exchange for your brilliance

Often times a potential client will approach you with the offer of designing and developing their web site in exchange for ownership in their business venture. There are two problems with this. The first is that these clients typically have not developed their business plan beyond the basic concept, an oversimplified idea, that is somehow going to make them millions. What this means is that they are expecting you to take their idea and run with it, to extrapolate their idea into a fully functional online business, all for a small percentage of their business. This is a lazy client and their business will undoubtedly fail.

The web is not field of dreams. Once a web site or web-based application is developed, it takes a lot of work to bring in customers and create revenue. If the client is unwilling to take their own ideas past the conceptual phase, it’s highly unlikely they are going to take it any further with or without your help. Second, if they were truly committed to a business that depends so heavily being online in a web-based application, they would also be committed to finding a way to pay for it. Do yourself a favor and stay away from entrepreneurs who promise a payout down the road. In our eleven years, we have turned down every single offer for ownership in exchange for web design and development work. And not a single one of those companies is still around.

Kept in the dark

There is a plague that infects new entrepreneurs with the misconception that a great idea is all it takes to be successful in business. Ideas aren’t worth shit, unless they are executed. And even then, only if they are executed well. If a client asks you to sign an NDA before they will even begin the estimating process, politely decline. (Chances are the idea is just another social network for pet lovers or gardeners or some other special interest group — “like Facebook, but different.”) They are investing too much into their ‘idea’ and not enough into how they are going to make it a profitable reality.

No idea is so brilliant it needs to be this closely safeguarded. In fact, every idea I’ve ever heard that was precluded by an NDA (which we refused to sign) was something I’d either heard before or had actually worked on before with another client. It doesn’t matter if the idea is patent-pending or revolutionary, because it’s not. And even if it was, where would you find the time to steal it? If you work on a large number of client projects, you’ve already got your hands full running your own business. And there is a good chance you have already developed similar ideas for other clients — putting you in the middle of a potential legal matter if you sign the NDA. You have your own business to run. Focus on that. In the long run it’s going to be far more consistent and profitable than someone else’s ‘idea.’

But, what if…

These red flags are based entirely on our experiences and the stories we’ve listened to from other web designers and developers. There are going to be exceptions, and each client should be given the benefit of the doubt until you have good reason to sever the relationship. Some clients will work through these issues to maintain a good-standing relationship, while other clients will balk at your most modest attempt to address these red flags. In the end, you will need to make the call on whether or not to begin or continue working with a client who displays these behaviors.

Photo credit: Cyclelicious & Howie221

We’ve come a long ways since the days of the all-seeing Webmaster — a relic of a bygone era when the Web consisted of little more than HTML pages and PERL-based form handlers passed around from site to site. Flash forward to today, and the only remnants of ‘Webmasters’ are advertisers squatting on the keyword over at Google. The Web has evolved tremendously in just the last few years, and the role of the Webmaster is as antiquated the <center> tag. These temporary cornerstones of the Web have been replaced, not only with new technology and methodologies, but also with the roles necessary to design and develop a new Web.

Different job titles were created to handle the myriad of needs required to design and develop dynamic, database-backed Web sites and applications. At first, each of these roles were uniquely defined and often kept separate, hiring a different person for each position. The Web designer handed off the design comps to the Web developer, who then coded the site and handed it off to the system administrator, who then uploaded the Web site onto the Web server. These responsibilities were so partitioned from one another that when something went wrong it became really difficult to fix because it was hard to pin down who was responsible for fixing it in the first place.

Today, the roles of the Web designer, Web developer, and system administrator are going through a convergence. Each sphere of influence and responsibility is bleeding into the other, so much so that we’ve seen the rise of a new role: DevOps, the Web developer who knows enough System Administration Voodoo to launch, update and optimize Web sites and applications.

So the question is, in this new era of shifting roles and responsibilities, which one are you?

Web Designers

It takes a lot more then thick-rimmed glasses, a turtleneck, and a MacBook to be a good Web designer. And, to be quite honest, this homogenized Web 2.0 look has gotten out of hand. We need Web designers who can bend Photoshop to their creative will and usher in a new look. And we need Web designers able to execute that look in HTML and CSS, and whatever template layer the application stack might be using. It’s not enough any more to throw a few design comps up on a screen and ask the client to visualize a Web site or Web-based application teeming with functionality. Web designers need to execute their ideas in a way that they can be realized, not visualized.

Web Developers

In the past, the Web developers were the ones in the sweet spot of the Web site life cycle. We enjoyed a bit of reprieve knowing that our craft was hardly understood by most and we could do just about anything we wanted with our code, as long as the Web site worked. Our Web apps were like black boxes that only we could see inside. The fact that our Web applications might have had issues in the code was easily covered up by pointing out difficulties in implementing the Web designers comps and inefficiencies in the operating system. Then Web designers started learning our trade, and system administrators started figuring out our code. Our little black box? It’s in pieces on the floor. Web developers can no longer afford to write sloppy code. We need to work closely with Web designers and system administrators to implement HTML and CSS correctly, to write good code that others can manage, and to optimize the application stack running our Web applications.

DevOps

DevOps is a more recent role combining the responsibilities of the Web developer with that of the system administrator. Web sites, and especially Web-based applications, have become advanced enough to require a working knowledge of the operating system running underneath them. A Web developer familiar with Linux can make modifications to increase site performance and monitor and debug problems in real-time. When launching, optimizing, and debugging Web-based applications in a production environment it is incredibly efficient to have Web developers, who wrote the code being deployed, also working to take full advantage of the application stack, right down to the operating system level.

Which One Are You?

If only one of these fits your job description, it’s time to change things up. Seriously. The Web is evolving at such a rate that you cannot afford to be complacent in a singularly focused Web career. You need to acquire and nurture overlapping skill-sets to stay relevant in the constantly changing Web. The best Web designers and developers are those who embrace this multidisciplinary approach to their work. Not only is it beneficial to your career, it also makes a tremendous difference being able to design and develop Web sites and applications with other multi-talented individuals. The best Web sites and applications online today are the results of tight-knit, cross-trained teams who not only understand one another, but also work well together.

Photo credits:
Glasses by anitakhart
Laptop by Lachlan Hardy
Cans by nicoleleec