You’re viewing the Client category. That’s awesome.
Request a Quote Forms: Good or Bad?
Posted August 23, 2010 @ 3:06 PM, by Marc, in Business, BWS, Client — 6 
I’ve always wondered if it’s a worthwhile effort for a service-based company to build, then field inquiries from, a request a quote form on their website.
A What?
Well, Query McCheery, a request a quote form is similar to your average contact us form, but it has additional fields that ask for project-specific details such as:
- Type of project
- Project goals
- Project budget
- Project deadline
- Special considerations
- …and so on
A visitor who is searching for a company that provides services they are in need of will often fill out a request a quote form to start the conversation between themselves and the company. The purpose of such a form, for the company anyway, is to act as a filter for project inquiries. If someone uses the form to submit information that is not inline with the service company’s offerings, project or client goals, availability, etc., then a polite email can be sent back that says, in more words than this, thanks, but no thanks.
ExpressionEngine’s Deny Duplicate Data Preference
Posted March 10, 2010 @ 10:51 PM, by Marc, in Client, ExpressionEngine — 1
There’s a preference in the ExpressionEngine control panel called Deny Duplicate Data which, if turned on, will instruct EE to check if new content submitted by a user is a duplicate of existing content already in the database. It’s a moderately helpful measure in the fight against comment spam, but it recently was the cause of a minor client work-flow issue and it succeeded in confusing me for about fifteen minutes before I finally realized that this preference was the culprit. I thought it would be wise to write this blog entry in case it happens to me again, or if anyone is searching the web looking for a solution to this same dilemma.
Comparing Apples to Oranges
Posted July 20, 2009 @ 9:52 AM, by Marc, in Business, BWS, Client — 18
As Boston Web Studio gains more traffic, more attention, and more referrals, the amount of project inquiries I receive increases proportionately. At the same time, and because of math and all of its wondrous properties, the amount of inquiries that I should politely decline increases as well.
While there are numerous reasons any given project should be declined, the one that’s been on my mind lately is that of being compared to another agency whose estimate is much lower than mine for the same work. As I’ll point out below, the term ‘same work’ is ambiguous and rarely means what it implies.
