ATILUS - Web Design | Internet Marketing

Top 5 Tips for Managing Email

Are you swamped by your email? Do you have tons of messages coming in everyday, so much so that you’re beginning to become overwhelmed? Me too! Or maybe you’re slowly getting more and you’re looking for tips on managing your email better before things get out of control. Regardless of what situation you are in, here are a few tips from me - Zach - an email master, that should help you out!

Give me 2 minutes - read this article - and I promise you will save tens if not HUNDREDS OF HOURS over the next year(s). 

I get around 100 - 200 emails per day, and send around 50 (in addition to any number of meetings and about a dozen phone calls). But managing all of this communication, particularly email is easy if you follow these tips for managing your email more efficiently:

1) Stay Organized

What does your inbox look like… go ahead, take a look, I’ll wait... is it overflowing with thousands of messages? Or is it nice and neat?

If it’s neat, move on, but if your “inbox” is where you keep EVERY message, you ARE going to have a problem. If not now, then pretty soon, your email will overwhelm you.

Start creating folders, sub-folders, or tags for your messages immediately. Go through that large list, create appropriate folders, and start dragging and dropping. I particularly LOVE outlook because folders can be created in seconds, and email can be quickly organized.

2) Use Your Inbox as a To Do List

Again, I love Outlook. Why do I love outlook so much (even MORE than gmail, which has a similar feature)? Well, as you may have noticed you can click on a message to flag it… when something comes into my inbox and I need to take action on it, particularly something important, I flag it, and move on.

I will deal with it later.

Everything in my inbox is an actionable item, everything else (stuff I’ve completed, people I don’t need to get back to, or newsletters) get filed immediately or automatically. The stuff in your inbox should ONLY BE STUFF YOU NEED TO DO WORK ON! And if there is ANYTHING that needs to be done in regards to the email, even a tiny-baby step at the end… it stays in the inbox until it is complete.

3) Automatic Filing

That last tip brings me to my next tip… filing automatically. No matter what software you’re using for your email, it has a feature to AUTOMATICALLY FILE MESSAGES. Here at Atilus, I get about 1000 automatic notifications a month because of some of the software we have (analytics, scheduled invoices, etc.). I don’t need to read them all (although I do need to keep copies), but because of the way the software works I must get them. Instead of manually filing them each month (taking probably about 30 minutes/total), I’ve instead created rules in outlook to automatically file them away. 

For more information on auto-filing emails in outlook check out “creating a rule” in outlook.

4) Say NO to Email

“What, Zach… this article is ABOUT EMAIL… how can I say no to email!?”

Studies have shown that multitasking actually SLOWS YOUR ABILITY TO GET THINGS DONE. You can get much more done if you “chunk” (I know it’s a funny word - it makes me think of a large chipmunk). Joking aside you’re wasting tons of time keeping your outlook open and jumping back and forth between new emails and the actual work that gets interrupted. Sure, your response time might look amazing to your clients or customers, but that is MEANINGLESS if you don’t get stuff done!

So what do you do?! Only read email a few times a day. Outside of that… I turn it off and actually DO work. Spending a lot of time emailing (communicating) actually creates MORE WORK, which is great… but it actually NEEDS TO GET DONE! Writing emails however, although at times necessary, is not the core of what needs to be done. For example, I received a request this morning for a new possible job with information. I need to create a proposal. If I continued to spend all of my time emailing people, that proposal would not get generated. 

What Should Your Email Schedule Look Like?

This works for me: 1st thing in the morning, mid-afternoon (around 1pm - 2pm) and then again in the evenings. 

Other than that… I’m working on the things that need to get done at the company, or work for clients. 

5) Manage Expectations

One of the big things I’ve learned in business, and in life over the last half decade is to manage people’s expectations. Be they friends, lovers, or clients, people have expectations of you - sometimes they are implied and not even directly communicated.

So you need to take control.

I remember reading about email response time expectations a few years ago (not sure where, or if the numbers are even that accurate), but apparently people expect a response to email in less than 15 minutes. That’s right, no matter where you are, what you’re doing, people want to get a response from you in 15 minutes. And is it any wonder? With smart phones and ubiquitous wireless access, you can have access to your email pretty much anywhere, anytime.

Recently I was one of those people that wanted a quick response:  

I emailed one of our software providers a question. It took them 5 days to respond. I was shocked. Although I never expected customer service from this particular vendor (they provide hosted project management solutions) I didn’t expect such a delay. We’ve spent literally tens of thousands of dollars with them over the last 5 years! But, in truth, it WASN’T an important question, and just needed to be answered “whenever.”

Anyway, your customers are thinking the same way. And how do you deal with this? Be upfront about response times, and if you do receive an email, shoot a VERY quick one back letting them know when you’ll be able to answer or address their problem, question, or inquiry. It’s that simple. Hell - you can take a week or even months sometimes to address something, but just letting them know when will keep rapport. 

CAUTION - be sure that you keep the message in your inbox (see tip #2) and DON’T forget what you promised. 

If you follow these 5 tips for managing email, you should be able to save time and do business more efficiently over the coming years. As always, if you have any questions, or tips of your own, feel free to comment below. I’ll be happy to hear from you!

Luxury RV Resort Florida

Are you the proud owner of a luxury RV? Maybe you own an American Coach, or a Damon. Personally, it’s always been a huge dream of mine to have a motorhome and then tour the country, and end my journey at a pristine destination right on the water, preferrably here in South Florida. 

As a quick side note, one of the reasons this is a goal of mine, is because my grandfather did it. He and my grandmother retired and traveled the country for nearly a decade in their motorhome. Whenever we were close by we got picked up and traveled all across the North East and down to Disney World - some of my best memories involve that old motorhome. 

But the question has always been - once you have your dream motorcoach, what now? Where do you go?

Well, a recently launched project of ours is here to answer your question, providing an amazing resort-like experience for those with luxury RVs.

We are happy to announce the final launch of Everglades, Florida based Luxury RV Resort company, Evergladesisle.com’s website and Internet marketing. We have been working with the team at EverGladesIsle as well as their marketing company AdSource for about 6 months now and are pleased to announce the successful re-launch of their newly designed website. In addition to a gorgeous new website, featuring information for Motorhome owners as well as existing residents of the resort, it also has videos relating to the everglades and a South Florida centered blog. We provided the following services: 

• Website Redesign
• Blog Implementation
• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay Per Click Marketing

So if you’re looking for a luxury RV resort in Florida, please check them out!

Thank you again to everyone at EverGladesIsle & AdSource. 

Internet Success Takes Hard Work

I was going to write a productivity post, but that needs to wait for another time, as I stumbled upon something even more juicy this evening while perusing LinkedIn. 

Thanks to Neil Patel for this great find. 

I just got done reading an awesome post over at Daily Blog Tips entitled: “Interview: 12 Top Online Entrepreneurs” odds are you have probably heard SOME of the names on the list and, if, like us at Atilus, you work in the web industry, odds are you’ve heard of everyone on the list. Basically it is a survey of 12 of the most well-known and successful online entrepreneurs in regards to how they work, and how HARD they work. The 12 interviewed included: 

• Trent Hamm
• Collis Ta’eed
• Chris Garrett
• Dan Schawbel
• Jonathan Volk
• Yaro Stark
• Shawn Collins
• Chris Pearson
• Neil Patel
• Aaron Wall
• Rand Fishkin
• Darren Rowse

And you may be completely blown away by the results.

You see, we get asked to do numerous AMAZING web ventures all the time, but more than planning, money, strategy, or any other “thing” you can bring to the table we like to discuss good ‘ole fashioned HARD WORK. Based on the interview, these top entrepreneurs are no strangers to hard work and despite ALREADY BEING SUCCESSFUL they continue to work their asses off cultivating their businesses, pleasing their customers, and bringing business in the door.

The Internet is no different than any conventional business. Sure, your 100+ hours/week can result in larger returns than other businesses or ventures, but it still takes dedication. I highly recommend checking out the post.  

How To Make a CSS 3 Button

CSS 3 is being incorporated into web design more and more as we progress into the future of designing for the web. Browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari are two of the main browsers that currently support some of what CSS 3 has to offer (unfortunately Internet Explorer is still trying to catch up).

With this said about CSS 3 being the future let’s put it to good use. CSS 3 has a number of new features that are just waiting to be tapped into but in this article we are just going to focus on what it can bring to the design table as far as making buttons are concerned.

I’m going to make a simple button using purely CSS 3.

Let’s start with a basic set up for a button:

<a class="button" href="#">Button</a>

Now the CSS:

a.button{
    background: #7e7e7e;
    color: #fff;
    display: block;
    font-size: 16px;
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-weight: bold;
    height: 35px;
    line-height: 35px;
    width: 100px;
    text-align: center;
    text-decoration: none;
}

The CSS used above is standard today and can be seen by all current browser types. This is purely CSS 2 at work here - nothing special so far. Now let’s add the magic (in this case magic = CSS 3). We will be adding a border radius, box shadow, and text shadow . Here is the code:

a.button{
    border-radius: 10px;
    -moz-border-radius: 10px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 10px; 
    box-shadow: 0px 2px 2px #ccc;
    -moz-box-shadow: 0px 2px 2px #ccc;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 2px 2px #ccc;
    text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #333;
    -moz-text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #333;
    -webkit-text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #333;
}

Now you are probably wondering what the extra lines are under the CSS 3 attributes that start with –moz and –kebkit. These signify the browser engine that is rendering the CSS. –moz is for Mozilla Firefox and –webkit is for Apple Safari. Without these the browser won’t know to render the CSS (for text-shadow you probably don’t need it but put it in anyway). The reason for this is that CSS 3 is not fully integrated into browsers yet and requires you to tell the browser engine that is rendering the code to call its name out and tell it to. Eventually we won’t need these prefixes but for now they are necessary.

But I digress.

I’m going to add one last style to the mix for good measure – a bottom border. So all together we have this:

a.button{ 
    background: #7e7e7e; 
    border-bottom: 1px solid #575757;
    color: #fff;
    display: block; 
    font-size: 16px;
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-weight: bold;
    height: 35px; 
    line-height: 35px; 
    width: 100px; 
    text-align: center; 
    text-decoration: none;
    border-radius: 10px;
    -moz-border-radius: 10px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 10px; 
    box-shadow: 0px 2px 2px #ccc;
    -moz-box-shadow: 0px 2px 2px #ccc;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 2px 2px #ccc;
    text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #333;
    -moz-text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #333;
    -webkit-text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #333;
}

Now as long as you are viewing this in Firefox, Safari, or some other CSS 3 rendering browser you should see this: (I have provided an image version for those without browsers that handle CSS 3).

If you wanted you could even create a small gradient in Photoshop (or equivalent application) and add it to the button for more effect.

And that’s it. Simple, right?

Here is a cheat sheet of all CSS 3 has to offer.

Now be wary when using CSS 3 in your designs. Remember that not all browsers support this so be sure that whatever you are designing works with and without the CSS 3 attributes you assign to it. Or you could just not care and do whatever the hell you want.

The Truth About Online Business Services

Are you thinking about switching some of your businesses core services online? Thinking about making the SAAS (software as a service) jump? Well before you do, READ THIS!

Online Business Services (SAAS)

Before we begin, I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “What does he mean… what are online business services and what is this SAAS stuff?”

It’s basically conventional software or key components of your business that are now featured on a website. Here are a couple of examples we use here at Atilus. 

Project Managment 

Instead of having a centralized server house project management software we utilize the online service, Basecamp to manage all of our projects. 

Accounting

Instead of installing a new version of quickbooks each year, we pay a monthly fee and use Quickbooks’ online version. 

During our daily conversations with businesses we learn a lot about each of our clients, and if there’s one thing we have a passion about (other than web development) it’s business. So, occasionally we also make recommendations on business services like the ones outlined above. But the question is… do the pros outweigh the cons, and will YOUR business really benefit? So let’s take a quick look:  

Pros

• Nothing to Install - Software and service is housed on someone else’s servers. You don’t have to worry about minimum requirements and compatibility. 
• Lower Up Front Cost - You don’t have to but a piece of software with a big initial price tag, instead you conventionally pay a small recurring monthly fee. 
• Possible Lower Total Cost - Depending on the service, their pricing model, and how often you conventionally upgrade, saas may in fact be less expensive. 
• Global Access to Data - Most services are online, meaning you can access your information anywhere with an Internet connection (including a cell phone!).
• Reduced Maintenance Fees - This is a big one. Here’s a quick example. A company I used to work for spent about $5000 setting up sophisticated exchange email (exchange rocks, but it’s expensive and complicated). Then the server required monthly maintenance (about $300 in an IT persons time each month). At the end of 2 years, that’s $12,200 JUST FOR EMAIL - AND THE BULK OF THAT COMES FROM MAINTENANCE! Instead you can now get a hosted exchange account for as little as $15/box/month and the price for the same size office would be $5400 in 2 years (a savings of 65%).

Cons

Possible Higher Cost - Not all services reveal a savings, in fact some are much more expensive. Case in point, Quickbooks - the very reason I’m writing this post! We would buy a new version every 3 years for about $100. Now we pay about $30/month, every month meaning our cost has gone up 900%. Holy shit! BUT… we weighed the pros: our accountant can access it alongside us from her office, we can access the data anywhere (including a clients office), and we get continual updates, saving us valuable bookkeeping and accounting duty/time. Well worth the extra money. 

Data Security - This is a biggie and differs based on services, products, and packages. Security may be an issue in your industry, so be sure to check into this before you make a decision. 

Helplessness - What happens if a service goes down? Helplessness. Unlike your own server or software, where you can call someone to get it fixed… you just have to wait. I find this very much akin to flying, sure everyone KNOWS its safer, but they’re still scared to death! Why? BECAUSE THEY GIVE UP CONTROL! In truth we’ve used about a half dozen applications online for the last couple of years and have had little or no problems the entire time. And if there ever is an issue, its fixed quicker than we could call an IT person into the office to fix our server.