Key Questions for your Clients

In reality, web designers should actually be marketing consultants specializing in web media, and web design is simply a tool to achieve these goals.

Our primary focus is to help clients attract more visitors to their sites and, in turn, convert these visitors into customers. Clients (should) see us as part of their overall marketing solution.

Before writing a proposal, some key questions need to be answered:

1. What is the client's target market? Who is their customer?
2. How do their clients make their buying decisions and what are their key criteria for buying?
3. How does the company currently reach their target market?
4. Does the client have a unique selling position?
5. How does it compare to their competition?
6. How do they want the interaction between themselves and their customers to go (from start to finish)?
7. What problem do they solve for their customers?
8. What is their solution? Is it comprehensive?
9. What are the benefits and advantages of their solution?
10. Is there proof of this?

Find answers to these questions, and you'll help your client achieve their goals. And that's what we're really after, isn't it?

CSS Cheat Sheet

• PNG, 97KB
• PDF, 379KB

This is a groovy, handy CSS cheat sheet that lists (nearly) all selectors (as of CSS 2.1) and properties. Notably absent are the :before and :after pseudo-selectors, but that's black magic anyway, so most people won't notice or care that those are missing.

CSS box model hack alternative

As nearly everyone knows, Microsoft's Internet Explorer just hates to be standards compliant. One of my personal favorites is the need to use the box model hack to fix the way borders and padding are rendered. I'm not a fan of the box model hack.

Happily, there's a simple alternative:

#box {
  width: 150px;
}

#box div {
  border: 5px;
  padding: 20px;
}

And the new HTML would be:

<div id="box">
  <div>
    ...content...
  </div>
</div>

Perfect! Now the box width will always be 150px, regardless of the browser!

Spyware Researchers Discover ID Theft Ring

Spyware Researchers Discover ID Theft Ring

Spyware researchers picking apart one of the more notorious spyware programs [CoolWebSearch] have stumbled upon what appears to be a massive identity theft ring hijacking confidential data from millions of infected computers.

"We found the keylogger transcript files that are being uploaded to the servers. We're talking real spyware stuff…chat sessions, usernames, passwords, bank account information, full names, addresses."

"We're seeing a lot of bank information and usernames and passwords to get in." [T]he log files included logins to one business bank account with more than $350,000 and another small company in California with over $11,000, readily accessible.

"There are lots of eBay account information and names and addresses of the people owning those accounts. Names, passwords, all matched up."