Well, January has kicked off 2011 with a bang for us.  I've been in the office all hours getting jobs completed, but also getting quotes prepared for prospective new clients.

The interesting thing about the potential new business that we've got is that it's of a very high quality and it all comes from referrals from existing clients.  This proves that our strategy of taking on fewer, larger projects and concentrating on quality is starting to pay off.

In the last week I have quoted for 7 pieces of work with a total value in excess of £70,000.  Of these 7, one is an existing client, five are referrals from existing clients and one found us through Google.

I'm more than pleased with this as it shows that clients trust us enough to recommend us to others and that the quality of the projects we win is much more important than the quantity.

Everyone knows that the most cost effective way to win business is through word of mouth but sometimes it's difficult to ensure that you offer the level of service that will generate advocates for your business.  If you've been running for a while and have lots of jobs that prevent you from doing this then the only way forward is to stand still... just for a short time while you take stock, clear the books and then start to move forward again.

It's 2011 and here's wishing everyone that vists a happy new year from all at Insight Creative.

2011 for Insight is going to be an interesting year in as much as we're going to change the way that we're working.  In the past we've taken on just about every project that we've had the opportunity of taking and that's not always been the best policy.  We're now going to be taking on less in the way of new work and concentrating on providing existing clients with the best service that we can give them when they need things changed on their websites. In the past, we've usually had 10 or 15 projects on the go at any one time. Now we're going to be taking on a maximum of 6 projects at any one time so that we'll have more time to devote to existing clients.

At the moment, the book is open for 2 new projects to start within the next couple of weeks as we have 2 sites that are just about to go live. The idea is that we'll have 2 projects in the design phase, 2 that are in the development and content population phase and 2 that are being tweaked with a view to going live.

As well as being able to devote more time to existing clients, this also ensures that we'll turn out new projects that much quicker.  It's a little bit risky turning away work but I think the benefits for the people we do business with outweigh the disadvantages for us.

So, now is the time to get in on this if you need a great website and an ongoing relationship that you'll actually enjoy.  Contact us for more information!

All at Insight Creative wish all our visitors a great Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

'Nuff said

I'm not going to say any more!

I'm not really sure what to say about this.  Someone in the office was talking about it and then brought a bar in.  It's best if you don't chew it.  Then you get the chocolate flavour first followed by the subtle hints of Marmite.

It sounds like it would be disgusting but it isn't bad. It's definitely not what your taste buds would expect when eating chocolate.  You start off thinking it tastes just like dark chocolate and then the Marmite sort of breaks through.  The first bite is a bit of a shock and then it gets better.

If anyone's interested - in the UK certainly - we got ours at Robert Dyas, which is a strange place to buy chocolate at the best of times, for £3 a bar.

As the great saying goes: Necessity is the mother of invention.  Well, last night, my wife trimmed my hair for me and the left side was a bit shorter than the right side.  I got up this morning and decided that I'd tidy it up a bit.  Unfortunately, I realised too late that the head wasn't on the clippers so I cut a swathe through my hair that's left me looking like a spayed cat.

Enter Photoshop and the marvels of digital photography.

What was a disaster was saved by our talented graphics whiz, Claire, an iPhone and Photoshop.  Take a picture, flip it in Photoshop, print it, cut it out and stick it on with a trusty Pritstick. The pictures show a result that is probably more subtle than Joan Rivers' facelifts!

Before and After:

It's been a busy week this week.  We've had 2 e-commerce sites go live:

• www.nauteriors.co.uk
• www.pilot-europe.com

We've got a third site which is 90% complete and should go live on Monday with a bit of work over the weekend and a fair wind behind us.  We're also part way through building an e-commerce site for an equestrian centre who sell equestrian clothing online.  That's moving along nicely and should be finished and live before long as well.

Communication has been fun with my home broadband going down for 24 hours and the phones in the office going down for most of the day today.

And lastly, at 5.00pm this evening I received a call from a client saying that their secure certificate for their web site had expired and that they had an advert in a magazine tomorrow promoting their online music store. The datacentre we use hadn't invoiced us or sent anything out to let us know that the certificate was expiring.  This is something they always do so this was a glitch in the system.

Anyway, I spoke to Globalsign who issues the certificates and to Donhost support and got exellent service from both.  An hour or so later and the new secure certificate was installed and the site for the client is ready to take orders again.  If anyone wants any classic rock then have a look at www.destinyrocks.com and rest assured that your details will be taken securely!

There are other developments but more about that later!

Oooo!!! Very frustrated this evening.  I've really got out of the habit of coding over the last 3 or 4 years and now I'm working on a little personal project that means I have to get my hands dirty with some PHP again.

I hope this is as close as I'll get to feeling like someone who has had some sort of trauma and has to learn to read and write again. When we're small and we start reading we just accept that we start at the beginning and build on our knowledge. When you've had a skill and you lose it then it's extremely frustrating.

What I have to do is some fairly basic stuff but I almost have to go back to the 'cat', 'sat', 'mat' principle and work my up. 

Oooh!  The latest bit of fun from the offices of Insight.  This is how it works:

• A £2.39 iPhone Application called Phonecam which turns your iPhone into a wweb cam that will take photos every 'x' seconds and upload them to a server.
• Our website then uses Ajax to display the most recent image and refresh it every 5 seconds

It's absolutely as simple as that.  It's taken me about 10 minutes to get it all set up and it looks like it's working a treat.  So, it's 9.30 on a Friday night and I'm sat at home looking after the kids.  If you're looking now, then you might catch a glimpse of me making a cup of tea.  If you're reading this at any other time then you'll see whatever I'm pointing the camera at right now.

I can't think of any totally practical applications for this but if you have an iPhone and it's just sitting in a dock on your desk or something then why not do something creative with it!

Yes, I know I've put 3 bs in dribbbling but that's the way it is when you're in our world.  Dribbble is an invitation only showcase site that allows designers to upload small snapshots showing the work that they're doing for their peers to comment on.

The whole idea is that each image is 120,000 pixels (400 wide by 300 high) which might include part of the navigation, the logo or just a snapshot to give people an idea of the look and feel you're coming up with.

Well, Claire and I spent an evening promising anything necessary to get invites and we ended up with 2!  Members get invites from time to time and they generally want to see your portfolio before they'll let you in so someone must have liked what we're doing.

Anyway, we're dribbbling as much as we can and hope to dribbble some more.  If you want to see our dribbbles then just visit:

dribbble.com/insightcreative