I’ve been designing & coding websites for over a decade, and have had many opportunities to learn better techniques as each iteration in new technology has presented itself over the years. That’s taken me from doing tabled layouts in the late 90s to learning CSS and finally to picking up things like JavaScript and HTML5 in more recent months. Whether you need a simple 5 page brochure site, a fully-featured online store, or even something more extensive like a custom-built web application, I love nothing more than to talk with people about the projects they’ve set out to build.
The vast majority of my consulting work takes on one of three basic roles:
Technology Advisor
As a technology advisor, I provide my clients with knowledge about their options. The vast majority of my clients, while having a business sense that is often infinitely superior to my own, lack a thorough understanding of the technologies available to them. I can look closely at a specific set of problems and come back with a specific set of solutions that make sense in today’s climate of ever-changing languages, trends & frameworks.
Third Party Consultant
As a third party consultant, my role is basically to act as an independent mediary between my client and an outside developer. All too often I am asked to perform work for a client that either (a) feels they paid too much money for the product they received, (b) didn’t feel like the product they received met their expectations or (c) purchased a product that was built on a technology that was not appropriate for the project in question. If you are preparing to pay more than $10,000 for a project with a single developer, especially in a situation where you may not have worked with them before, it will more than pay for itself to have a third party consultant who is familiar with the technologies being proposed take an outside look at things just to make sure everything makes sense.
Project Management
Occasionally I am asked to take on a project that is simply too large to complete by myself, or that requires the use of specialized developers to complete part of the job. In these cases, I often take on the role of Project Manageer. In doing so, I help the client budget the project, assemble a team, and manage the individual segments of the build in the way that makes the most sense for the project at hand.
I am comfortable working in a variety of Content Management Systems. Specifically, I have extensive experience working in Joomla, WordPress, Magento, HubSpot, and GetSimple, and to a somewhat lesser degree have used Drupal, Adobe Business Catalyst, Shopify and MediaWiki. I am comfortable building themes or templates in all of these systems. What’s probably more important to my skill set than knowledge in any one of these particular systems though is the ability to quickly jump in to a piece of software that is foreign to me and start working.
We’re seeing the emergence of many new systems in the modern climate of web apps and progressive iteration. The first Content Management Systems written in server-side JavaScript are starting to surface. NoSQL is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to the relational databases of the past. What this means to me is that it’s far more important how capable a developer is at sufficiently learning something new as opposed to continuing to rely on marketing the same old systems to new clients simply because it’s what they know.
I do quite a bit of slicing / coding work, which is to say that if you already have a design completed for your site, but would like it to be professionally coded, I’m your guy. I tend to code in HTML5 or XHTML 1.0 (strict) and take extra care to ensure things like standards compliance, semantic coding practices, and search engine optimization are employed to bring about an end product that loads fast and performs well. I’m more than happy to include JavaScript for any interactivity / animation, or basic PHP for things like form processing as part of my slicing quote. Theming for all the various Content Management Systems is also available.
I do my best to keep my pricing competitive on slicing jobs. While you can certainly shop around for lower prices at any of a number of the quick turn-around conversion services, I can’t stress to you enough how important I think it is that you keep your money in the same region as your business / organization. In return, I’ll offer you things like, say, my cell phone number and even an experience that is tailored to your needs as opposed to forcing you to purchase options from a menu (take that, automated outsourcing services!).
See an Example of my JavaScript
I can help out in a variety of ways on any email marketing campaign. On the design side, I can design and create email templates, format content and code HTML from existing designs. On the management side I’m comfortable working with a variety of different mail platforms and list management services. I provide feedback and analytics on a campaign after it’s run, and can even perform multivariate or A/B testing to determine which strategies are converting and performing the best.
Last but not least, once the initial work of creating a web project is out of the way, you’re going to want somebody to keep the ship from sinking, no? Some of the ongoing services I offer include:
