I often compare business relationships to marriage. Many of the same dynamics apply- communication, trust, honesty, shared goals, etc. Just as a marriage starts with courtship we often talk about “dating before marriage” when talking with a potential SmallBox client. We know, from years of experience, that a good fit is needed on both sides. We aren’t interested in dragging anyone to the altar, telling them whatever they need to hear to sign up. It doesn’t work out, we’ve tried it.

90% of the leads that come into to SmallBox aren’t the right fit for us. One of the reasons we started Springboard Marketing was to have a home for some of these leads. Usually these are smaller projects, often new businesses, that need a “starter home” not a “dream home”. SmallBox is focused on the latter, Springboard on the former. So Springboard is the perfect solution for many of the leads we field. We also recommend other local businesses and freelancers when appropriate. We believe in helping anyone that comes our way even if there’s no monetary upside for us.

For the 10% that appear to be a good fit we have a “sales” process that we’ve fine tuned over time. We don’t actually have a sales team at SmallBox so I feel reluctant to even use that dirty word “sales”, but let’s face it, we do need to sell ourselves when we have a desirable prospect. First we set up a meeting. Our preference is to have someone from our team, usually myself or Dan Fahrner our Marketing Director, come out to visit with the prospect. We feel it’s important to have a face-to-face conversation, see the office, meet some of the team and get an overall feel for the company, its products/services and its culture. During this meeting we will talk about the company’s needs, past efforts and most likely walk through some examples of work we have done. We will also talk money and timeline to make sure we are in the general ballpark.

If that first “date” goes well then we usually schedule a second meeting at the SmallBox offices. This time we bring in some of the SmallBox team that would be working with the prospect. We also do some whiteboarding and get into specifics around what an engagement would look like- what features a website will need, what ongoing marketing services are needed, what underlying problem needs to be solved, etc.

After this second session, assuming both sides agree to continue, we draft a Statement Of Work and send it over for consideration. Our policy is to “quote as far as we can see”. Sometimes this means we can quote a new website and marketing plan- soup to nuts, sometimes we can only see as far as a planning engagement. If rough ranges are needed beyond what we can confidently quote we also provide these ranges. These ranges don’t include the same level of detail since we need to complete the first phase of the project before we have clarity on the remaining work. This also limits risk for the client who can, if needed, work with another partner for the remainder of the work. This is a rare occurrence but we appreciate that it can sometimes be the best outcome for all parties.

Once we have a finalized Statement Of Work we schedule a kick off meeting. On larger projects with a number of stakeholders we often bring in lunch to the client’s office. We feel this is a good, informal way to get the two teams together. It used to be that most business was done while “breaking bread” and we feel this is a good tradition to revive. In smaller engagements we may get straight to work. It just depends on what’s right for the project. Once the project is rolling we have a process that kicks in for each kind of engagement- websites, audits, consulting, marketing. Look for another post, or two, on that topic in the near future.

Here’s some questions you might have with my best attempt at answers:

What about out of town clients? We are even more selective about working with clients that we can’t easily visit with in person. Since we feel it is so important to have face-to-face communication on a project, a little ironic I realize since we are a web company, we need to be 100% confident we have a great match when working with a distant client. For larger projects we are happy to travel.

How much do we charge? It can really depend on the client and project but here’s some basic info. Our websites start at $15k and most are $25-75k with some well over $100k. Our marketing engagements start at $2500 a month and most are around $5k a month, not including third party spends (AdWords, Facebook, etc). We also offer site audits and other smaller consulting engagements that usually fall under the $10k mark.

How do you determine a good fit? There are a number of factors- scope of work, budget, timeline, location and, most importantly, culture. If the leadership of your organization doesn’t believe in the web and is only signing off on an agreement because they feel they have to, then we aren’t the right fit. We do our best work when we work with other believers.

Want to talk? Even if you aren’t sure if we are the right fit for your needs we are always happy to talk and help you find the right home. Call us at 317-924-0923 or use our contact form.

Factory Week allows for our entire team to stretch out creatively and take on new challenges. Factory Week is also about getting things done so when one of our developers, Jordan Wilson, pitched the idea of making a video game tied into SmallBox culture were we extremely excited even though a lot of questions surrounded the execution of the project itself.

Read on to find out the story behind our video game.

The Jackal Contest

UPDATE – We have our winners. You will be notified shortly on how to redeem your prizes. This contest is now closed. Thanks for participating!

Starting today. Play the game – Musée de Bobby Pin: The Return of The Jackal – where you take on the role of international thief extraordinaire, The Jackal, and successfully outwit and out maneuver the security of the Musée de Bobby Pin to abscond the most prized bobby pin in the entire museum. After successfully jumping, sneaking, and stealing your way to victory the game will display a special phrase. The first 5 individuals to email us the phrase proving the success of their caper before Monday, January 30 at 5pm EST will win an Indy grab bag. Our selection of prizes Just Pop In popcorn, local music, tshirts and other goodies.

What can we do? What will be fun to play?

The most important aspect of the video game project actually happened weeks before Factory Week: Jordan’s project pitch to Jeb and the team. At first the idea of developing a video game seemed a little out of place. We took the idea a bit further and came up with a concept for the game that tied it directly into SmallBox culture by focusing on the Musée de Bobby Pin and its nemesis, the thief known as The Jackal. The light went on and the excitement level immediately rose as the project was green lit.

With a general concept and goals defined, there was still work to be done leading up to Factory Week to ensure the project was possible. Jordan used his spare time to research platforms and game engines that match his skill set. The final selection ended up being an ActionScript 3 code library that specializes in 2D platforming (running and jumping) games called Flixel. With our tools chosen, our concept defined, we were ready for the first day.

The first morning of Factory Week Jordan and myself as project manager met to define our daily goals. Our initial issue was that we had to flesh out our video game concept so that it had the potential to scale based on our progress throughout the week. What was the simplest version that would still be a complete game, but also leave room for expansion if we wanted to add onto the game? That answer led us to concepting several levels of museum security that The Jackal would have to conquer in order to unlock his prized bobby pin as the end goal. While our final version ended up having 3 puzzle rooms total, we left room initially for creating an additional 5 rooms.

Welcome to the Musée

Midway through the first day we felt we had a solid concept so Jordan began work on a prototype game with placeholder artwork to put our ideas to work. Our goal by the end of the first day was to commit to our game concept or know if we needed to simplify it further. We could not move forward with specific design elements until we knew exactly what elements we needed to create until the game concept was locked down.

Coloring with Legos

While Jordan began his prototype, I brought in our lead designer and culture advocate for the project, Leigh Marino, to get her up to speed on where we were headed with the game. We decided to work on the overall style by looking for inspiration for the museum design and The Jackal character himself. Based on the strengths of the game engine, we decided to pursue a sprite based or 8-bit art style reminiscent of early Nintendo video games. The most interesting aspect of this was that even though the graphics themselves look relatively simplistic, Leigh cautioned that designing these elements could be very time consuming. It became very obvious that designing a video game in a week is possible, and developing a video game in a week is possible, but the real challenge would be combining the two in the same timeline.

Our initial interactive prototype proved successful enough on Day 2 that we could nail down our design wish list. As with any prototype some features worked better than others (the lasers) while features that seemed relatively simple (going through doors) proved to take more time and others had to be scrapped entirely (an inventory and gadget system). Overall though, we were happy with where the game was headed and had confidence that we would be able to make a complete experience by the end of the week.

Now that the design elements were defined a bit more clearly, we brought in additional SmallBoxers that had time to spare to assist with the pixel art, namely Justin Shimp and Emily Watkins. The team hammered away at this project as well as the other Factory Week projects and several personal hours were spent at home to keep the video game on track. It is safe to say that no other Factory Week project had so many different people working on project features they had never done before. While Jordan and myself were the “most experienced” in video game development neither of us had completed a Flixel game to this point so communicating what we needed from the design team was a challenge because most of the time, we weren’t sure what we needed until we were able to work with it. Thankfully, we have a very patient design team at SmallBox.

The prize bobby of the entire collection.

A major breakthrough occurred in the afternoon on day 4 when Jordan completed a fully featured prototype. At this point we had a complete game, the only factor being the graphics we were using were placeholder graphics so it wasn’t exactly presentable to the public. However, Jordan was now free to work more directly with the design team and customize the graphics as needed. By the end of the day, the first version of the game with our design assets was sent out to the team and we considered it a success when Jeb found the game challenging without being frustrating.

The final day actually found the video game with more art assets than we knew what to do with. In applying the artwork we had to make some tough choices that did not allow for some of our hard work and detailed design elements to be displayed in the final game. Instead we opted for using fewer design elements that had a more consistent look and feel. By mid-afternoon the video game was finished. That just left play testing and fixing relatively small issues throughout the rest of the day. After one final step of incorporating the game into the Musée’s homepage on the SmallBox website, the project was complete.

Completion is no small accomplishment

I could not have been more proud of our team on this project. Not only did we complete a project outside of our normal skill set, but just talking about the game brought about a sense of pride from the entire company. Passion projects are notorious for never having an end, and our team did a masterful job of producing a truly finished product. The video game project went from not even being an option for Factory Week to becoming one of the most tangible and entertaining representations of our company’s culture.

And we’re off!
Day one of the January 2012 edition of Factory Week is in the books. We got our assignments for the week in our first huddle on the mezzanine of the Speak Easy, our HQ for the week. After one day, I can’t say enough good things about this space. If you’re interested in co-working space in Indy, you’ve got to check it out.

What we’re up to:
With 18 projects queued up, we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’re tackling everything from planning for the team trip to SXSW, to taking new team photos, to developing a video game for our culture page. Good thing there’s plenty of white boarding space for all of these projects -  224 sq. ft. to be exact.

Keep on the up & up!
We will post a recap of the week here, but you might want the whole nitty gritty. If so, follow along on the Factory Week blog and the twitterings @factoryweek. We also started an instagram account, so look for SmallBox there!

One month of whirlwind posting later, we’ve successfully completed our Think Kit goal of daily blogging. Thank you, thank you to those of you out there who played along, commented on the project or one of our posts.

We embarked on this little mission to challenge ourselves to blog more frequently, but we had a few other fringe benefits, namely:

• We had two SmallBoxers write their first blog post for SmallBox. For Elizabeth, it was her first blog post ever (Hooray, Elizabeth!). Adding more voices from the team made our blog feel more vibrant than before.
• By comparison, our normal level of posting seems much more doable. Was it easy to post every day? Nope. There were days we were down to the wire. Sometimes we had to swap assignments as thing popped up in our schedules. But we did it, and now a blog post a week seems like a cake walk.
• Internally, we’re talking about our blog, ideas, what types of posts we should write in the future much more. There’s more enthusiasm across the team.

We’re considering keeping the Think Kit candle burning by emailing out a blogging idea periodically throughout the year. Think you might want to participate? Go here to sign up for emails, and we’ll keep you posted!

With any new work environment comes a learning curve with new technology. As one of the newer team members here at SmallBox, I finally got the opportunity to break into the world of both Mac computers and iPhones when I started working here in late May.

I had dabbled a bit with Mac computers, but will be the first to admit that the cell phone I had upon joining SmallBox didn’t have anything close to a data plan. Yes, I know…I’m a little slow to embrace technology. So, how did I do with all this newness? Within a week of learning some of the fantastic keyboard shortcuts on the MacBook and probably less than a day of playing with my new iphone, I can definitely say I am HUGE fan of these technologies.

I am regularly impressed by the intuitive nature of these products and feel like the learning curve was much more friendly. So although I still don’t drool over the possibility of a new iPhone 4S for myself in the near future like lots of people in my office, I can definitely say these new technologies have pushed me over to the Apple side for good.

This post is part of Think Kit 2011.

What’s Think Kit, you ask? Go here to find out.

We had a lot of great moments at SmallBox this year. From countless awesome client projects, to doubling up on sites at 24 Hour Web Project, to hosting a big party in our office space on the hottest day of the year. Choosing one photo is tough. So, I’m not choosing one, but two.

Exhibit a: bikes!
I love that a lot of SmallBoxers ride their bikes to work. I love that we’re right near Indy’s Monon Trail. I love this instagram photo that shows a whole mess of bikes on our rooftop bike rack.

That’s right. We’re a second floor office and we lug our bikes up to the roof. No biggie – we like to ride.

Exhibit b: celebration!

After pulling off our first Factory Week – one week long, intensive focus on internal projects, Jeb hosted a pretty rockin’ party at the Banner pad.

We often spend meetings reviewing projects, dissecting how to get better at what we do. That process is crucial for us, but we frequently have to remind ourselves we need to celebrate victories too. This snap shot of our little after party captures the sweetness of celebration perfectly, I think. Can’t wait for the next round of Factory Week, coming in January!

This post is part of Think Kit 2011.

Lydia and I used to participate in a group blogging project called Reverb run by Gwen Bell. The idea was simple: post on your blog everyday in December (or as much as possible) following a series of prompts designed to reflect on the past year.

Yesterday I got an email that Gwen wasn’t going to run the project this year. Instead, she open sourced it, inviting others to create their own version. We couldn’t resist. With one day to swoop into action, we hatched this plan and dubbed it Think Kit.

Daily posting? Are we crazy?!
We wanted to flex our publishing muscle a little. We like to blog. We squeeze it in when we can. This project will help us approach our sharing habits with a little more intention, at least for this one month.

At the same time, we’ll sate another need: we like to connect with our community and value being part of a larger Indy tech culture. We’re hoping other companies and individuals will join us. Won’t you, please?

Why Think Kit?
In our weekly internal meetings, we talk a lot about ideas, from whence they spring, how we seek and maintain inspiration. This seems like a perfect place to start – a simple set of topics to spark some thought and wordsmithing.

Week 1:
We’re keeping it simple to start. The first week is all about reflecting on your favorite things from this year. Today: a favorite photo.

Go here to see this week’s prompts. There, you’ll also be able to sign up to receive a daily email about each prompt during December.

Are there any rules?
Only rule is no rules! Post when you want, write about 3 prompts or 30, change up topics. Take the Think Kit and make it yours. We can’t wait to see what you do with it.

Happy Think Kitting!

Think back to your first cell phone. Mine was a black and white Nokia with detachable faceplates and a wonderful version of the game snake. Those days are long gone and I now have an iPhone that makes my first computer growing up look like a sad joke.

Not only is this little device in my pocket faster than the computers of yore, it also has the power to view just about every bit of content on the web. But have you tried looking at a website that hasn’t been optimized for mobile devices?

It’s confusing. Images break, forms don’t work. A bad mobile experience means I’m almost certain to search for another site that offers a better user experience on my phone.

According to Google, I am not alone. Around 60% of people are unlikely to return to a site that’s not mobile friendly. User engagement increases by 85% with a mobile-friendly design. That is steadily increasing and for the most part businesses have been slower about catching up with technology than their customers.

In response to these numbers, Google has launched a information site called GoMo to educate owners of websites. The site provides data that makes it pretty clear: mobile browsing is here to stay.

Google’s findings are very much in line with the trends we see in our client sites. In fact, in reviewing a sample of the scores of websites SmallBox monitors, mobile traffic increased a whopping 230% in 2011 compared to 2010.

If you’re ready to get serious about mobile, SmallBox can help! Don’t be caught with a website that cannot be viewed by a huge percentage of your customer base. Contact us today for questions or quotes.

When we travel somewhere, whether it be for an extended weekend or longer, for work or for play, there are things we obviously want to know in order to make the experience memorable. What are the best places to eat? Where will we be staying? Is there anywhere to shop? What do we have to see and experience before leaving?

For Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), they knew a more user-friendly website that answered all of those questions and more for visitors would be key to their future growth.

The Challenge

For years, CVB knew their website provided valuable information to visitors, but content was hard to find unless visitors knew exactly what they were searching for. Navigation was unorganized and hard to manage. CVB wanted their visitors to find lodging solutions much more easily and quickly.

CVB needed a custom web solution that was clean and user-friendly – allowing customers to easily find lodging locations throughout Brown County. They also needed a solution that was easy to manage, provided valuable information to their customers and offered a fun experience. They wanted their customers to be able to search for and find valuable information easily.

Brown County CVB has partnerships with local businesses as well. Restaurants, lodging, shops and other multi-faceted organizations have pages and information on CVB’s website for people visiting the area. For years, CVB was spending countless hours inputting information from their valuable partners who operate businesses throughout Brown County. Anytime a partner needed an update to information, CVB was responsible for updating that on the site.

They needed a custom solution that allowed all of their partners to login and update their pages and information that was important to them and potential customers.

The Solution

After two years of deliberating on building a new web presence, Brown County CVB partnered with Smallbox. Brown County CVB knew they wanted an Indiana company to build their new website and after they learned about Smallbox’s success with the 24-Hour Web Project and involvement in the community, they felt that the partnership was a good fit.

Smallbox built an incredibly robust content management system that would provide logins and editing capabilities to CVB’s unique partnerships. Not only did Smallbox address Brown County CVB’s lodging concerns and make it easier for visitors to locate local lodging establishments, we applied the same technology and functionality to restaurants, shops and other organizations in the community as well.

Smallbox implemented multiple calls-to-action on Brown County CVB’s new website that drive traffic to upcoming events and an interactive map where visitors can browse all of the businesses and establishments by location.

The Results

In browncounty.com, Brown County Convention & Visitors Bureau now has a robust custom web solution that is extremely easy to navigate for visitors.

Whether you’re looking for a place to stay, shop, eat or see, or if you’re looking for things to do, it’s easy to find simply by browsing and making your way through the website. You can search by things to do, see, eat, etc or by location through an interactive map. No longer does a person have to know specifically what they’re searching for in order to find it.

Clear and easy-to-find calls to action blocks throughout the site help drive visitors to finding information and content they’re looking for.

Brown County is beautiful. CVB’s new website and CMS provide the tools they need to sufficiently show off Brown County. The Smallbox CMS is easy to update content with new photos, video or other media like a live “Leaf Cam” where visitors can monitor color changes in the trees and make trip decisions based around “peak times” throughout the year.

With the addition of partner logins, Brown County CVB team members save substantial amounts of time and resources from fielding requests to edit, exchange and create new content for each individual business on the site. Now, individual businesses and partners can manage their own content anytime they want.

Feedback from users has been incredibly well received. Brown County CVB partners predominately love the flexibility the site and CMS have to offer.

Check out Brown County’s new site here.