We had a blast designing the brand new site for P.J. Clarke’s, a popular restaurant chain in Chicago. The project allowed us to flex our design muscles, and craft a site that reflects the comforting, well-worn retro style of the restaurants.

When you visit P.J. Clarke’s, one of the things that stands out is the way the walls are covered in old photographs–of Chicago neighborhoods and Hollywood celebrities. So we decided to use photography as a motif for the website. We incorporated a row of Hollywood head shots on the homepage, and scattered old snapshots or postcards throughout the site.

So many restaurant sites are visually amazing–with “cool” animations and sound effects– but they are slow-loading and nearly unusable. We were conscious to avoid this trap with P.J. Clarke’s. As you click through the site, you’ll realize that this is a good example of a site that is aesthetically rich, while still remaining easy to navigate and understand. As fun as the design process was, we were careful to never lose sight of the fact that P.J.’s website needed to be a quick and easy source of information for potential customers.

I’m generally wary of self-help books, business motivation books, diet books and just about anything else that promises a “revolutionary secret” to help you solve a particular problem. That being said, I’ve actually read quite a few of this type of book. They’re not completely devoid of value. Many of them have good advice and ideas. But they are hardly “revolutionary” and most of them don’t lead me to fundamentally change anything.

The big exception for me has been Getting Things Done, by David Allen. This book changed my life forever. I’m in my third year of using Allen’s principles, and they are amazingly flexible and effective.

Allen describes the ways in which all of us are bombarded with “things” to do, each of them creating a strain on our minds. Then he suggests a method to promote “stress-free productivity”. His techniques help us keep detailed track of the myriad things to do, while allowing us to focus specifically on the task at hand, without wondering if there is something else we should be doing instead.

The basic premise is that you need a system. You need a way of tracking your projects (both at work and in your life), and you need to follow this process every time, without fail. If you setup a easy-to-use  system, and you follow it always, then you will be able to trust it. You will trust that your system will not let anything fall through the cracks. And when you are sure that nothing is falling through the cracks, then you will experience lower levels of stress.

That’s the broad overview, and I’m sure it sounds much like the vague self-help nonsense that I mentioned earlier. But Allen’s book details a series of specific techniques that are easy to implement and amazingly effective. It’s not vague at all–he spells out exactly what you need to do, and when you need to do it. I’ll explore these techniques further in future posts.

Does it work? It’s worked wonders for me. It allows me to manage an ever-expanding client list (managing 60 clients sometimes requires me to switch my focus every 15 minutes, resulting in a very productive day even though it is filled with small tasks), keep track of life’s daily activities and build a list of “someday” projects that I can easily pluck and tackle when time allows. I plan to follow this system (with my own tweaks and innovations) for the rest of my life.

So that’s my endorsement.  It’s not easy for me to get excited about something I read in a self-help book, but Getting Things Done is legitimately awesome.

I just finished reading Harry Beckwith’s What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business. One of the chapters that stood out to me was the one where he talked about having realistic expectations for your website. He writes:

Osborn Drugs in Miami, Oklahoma, pioneered the commercial use of the Internet. In 1996, it created an easy-to-use Web site, publicized it well, and waited for the cash to roll in.

It didn’t roll in. It crawled.

The site produced moderate growth–about 5 percent annually. More significant, however, was where that added 5 percent came from: 90 percent of the people using the site already were customers.

The Web site, in the end, has not changed Osborn Drugs’s business. It has merely tweaked it, shifting a few store buyers over into online buyers.

Osborn Drugs learned that for most businesses, the Internet is not an enormous marketing tool. It just creates one more communications medium and distribution channel that can attract a few new customers and help you satisfy your current ones….

Year 2001 Beckwith Partners
Estimated New Business Inquiries

From all sources = 325
From firm Web site = 3

The Internet is not your business. It merely supports the fundamentals of business–basics that the Internet does not change.

I couldn’t agree more. Net Elevation sometimes gets business inquiries from potential customers that seem to think a new website will rescue their struggling company, or, even worse, that their fledgling company will depend on its website for all their sales leads. We try to encourage these folks to think of their website as providing no more than 10% of their overall inquiries, just to be safe.

It may seem odd for a web design company to be discouraging potential clients from “dreaming big” with their online business goals. But our mission is to help our customers, even if it means turning down a project that could provide us with a short-term profit. We hope that all of our customers will stick around for many years to come, not burning out due to a faulty marketing plan that is overly dependent on magical results from their website.

We are proud to announce the official launch of Net Elevation on November 1st, 2007.

I started Net Elevation with my friend, Josh Berkowitz, a very talented web designer and super-nice guy. Josh was working as a freelancer like me, and we noticed that we offered similar services, but that we each had our own strengths. For example, I noticed that Josh has a great eye for design, while he recognized that I have the ability to sort out complicated technical challenges. With our complimentary skills, a partnership made perfect sense.

For the past few months, we’ve been working feverishly to prepare our new company website and to determine our strategy and values. I am very proud of what we’ve put together and excited to continue building the company.

We will be using this blog to explain our philosophies, and to offer tips and strategies for getting better results from your website. It will include the usual announcements and news, but also discussion of some topics that may seem unrelated–like pop music, advertising,  sports, the latest YouTube sensations or that joke we heard on Leno last night.

If you’re interested in keeping up, please subscribe to our RSS feed located in the sidebar. Thanks for joining us on this journey.

We’ve been busy–cranking out a slew of good sites recently. Here are a few:

The centerpiece of Problem-Loan-Solutions is the long sign-up form, but we still managed to squeeze plenty of valuable information into the page without making it appear crowded or busy. The photo of the woman holding the “Approved” loan application is somewhat cliche, but perfect in this context. Despite the serious subject matter, the site is friendly, cheerful and welcoming.

Most of their competitors’ sites are bland and corporate, but Certificate Management Solutions wanted something that would stand apart from the pack (without getting too crazy, of course). When they first saw our black and purple design, they said it reminded them of “a New Wave nightclub”. They loved the bold, bright colors…and they especially loved how it revived their online marketing efforts.

Just because a company offers obscure financial products, it doesn’t mean their site has to be bland. Take a look at how we made the process of shopping for a surety bond colorful and exciting.