Doing business online

The Web is a crucial place to do business, especially at this time of year. Anyone paying attention knows this, but you may not know the significance of the statistics. It’s too soon for 2009 numbers, but in 2008, Nielsen announced that the number of online shoppers had increased 40 percent in the last two years to 875 million people worldwide.

To turn more of those shoppers into loyal customers in the New Year, marketers and Web developers need an ambitious online plan. Here are seven New Year’s resolutions for Web development relating to:

• Focus
• Design
• Mturk & crowd sourcing
• Wordpress
• User testing
• Social media

1. I will… start small

Many entrepreneurs and Web designers suffer from an overwhelming amount of ideas. Their heads and subsequently their screens overflow with information – which is counterproductive. You must focus. You must start small. Find a niche, figure out how to be the best, and then grow in phases.

Not only is this important from a budget perspective, but it’s also important in terms of the scope of a project. If you start small, you can shuffle priorities easier and your Web team will produce results faster. Don’t get me wrong, plan for success. But, don’t get so absorbed in the dream that you aren’t making good decisions for the present. With proper planning, you should be able to add features and scale in due time.

2. I will… send a clear message

Focus is also important from a Web usability standpoint. When a customer comes to your site, it’s critical that your design and messaging are clear. Your focus will give customers a reason to stay on your site and a purpose to fulfill while there.

There are a couple of design trends entrepreneurs can employ, which essentially amount to doing a better job of introducing the company. First, display a clear, written message in a larger font in the header. This technique is known as an ‘intro box’. It draws attention and reinforces to the customer that they have come to the right place. Secondly, display a large graphical banner prominently on landing pages, such as the home page, for featured product(s) or service(s). Screen resolutions have gone up over the years, so be sure to take advantage of the extra space and capture the customer’s attention. Both the intro box and graphical banner should be punctuated with appropriate calls to action. I would recommend sending customers to a contact form or some other sales page rather than pushing them to content pages. If you can, get them into the funnel in that single click.

3. I will… put money into market testing

Many owners inevitably make the same mistake early on in a project and it puts them on the path to failure; they assume the role of target audience. Nine times out of 10, they aren’t the most accurate audience.

As a new business owner, you don’t need to guess or assume. You can inexpensively conduct your own market research by crowd sourcing on websites such as Mturk. One of my current clients is building a new ecommerce website, and we used surveys on Mturk to get:
• Slogan ideas
• Logo design feedback
• Votes on slogan and logo finalists

Surveys like this can be done for less than $20 each. You can also use Mturk for content like product reviews.

Speaking of branding and crowd sourcing, if you’re on a tight budget, you can even use a site like 99Designs for logo design.

4. I will… create content

One very effective way to create and manage your own content yourself is through a website powered by Wordpress. Many entrepreneurs have heard of this software and/or seen it in use. I’m merely reiterating how effective it makes managing a website yourself, without knowing much about HTML or coding in general. You can also create your own blog, which SEO experts will tell you is very helpful in attracting traffic to your website.

On a related note, if you want to add products to your site, take a look at xCart shopping cart software. This is a search engine friendly cart that will allow you to quickly get up and going with eCommerce. Also, aside from credit cards, accept PayPal. About one in four online transactions are through PayPal now, so it has crossed the threshold of importance.

5. I will… put money into usability testing.

After you have created a beta website, you need to perform usability testing. This used to be an expensive endeavor, but you can get affordable usability testing from Usertesting.com. Be sure to watch the sample video because you’re getting a good deliverable for $29.

You can also inexpensively do browser compatibility testing through Browsershots.org. You can draw your own conclusions from statistics on the W3Schools.com site about which browsers your site must be accessible in. At minimum, I would recommend Firefox (47%), IE 8 (13.3%), IE 7 (13.3%) and Chrome (8.5%). Don’t get me started on IE 6.

6. I will… promote my site.

Be social. Twitter and Facebook may be fads, but human interaction has always been part of life. Social media is just the latest way to feed that need, so extend your influence and reach prospective customers. Create a multiple accounts on each destination so you can have your own personal account and a company-named account. I’m not going to go off on a tangent about how to maximize your social media presence, just reinforce that it can be done right and yield results. Take this effort on your own shoulders and be a spokesperson.

7. I will… quit smoking/lose weight/get fit

Ok, so that one isn’t about Web development. Still, it’s a good idea if you plan to have the energy that keeps your company growing and enjoy your wealth.

I hope you had a great 2009 and wish you a prosperous 2010.

Time to update

There are plenty of good reasons for these companies to take time to upgrade their logos. They include updating an antiquated look, refreshing a brand that’s gone stale, improving corporate image, re-establishing prominence, and in some cases the logos simply weren’t good to begin with.

IBM

NASA

Panasonic

Touchstone Pictures

Ikea

Red Lobster

Microsoft

Washington Redskins

Gold’s Gym

Verizon

Other great logos

You may not have heard of all of these brands, but they are real. No imaginary companies in this top 10 logo list. Hopefully you too appreciate the great logos these companies, organizations, and entities have created.

Napster

I’ve always liked this logo, even when they got tarnished.

United States Air Force

Such a strong, dynamic logo especially considering the layers of bureaucracy this must have gone through.

Under Armour

Personifies the solid features of the product. Looks great in a single color.

Buffalo Wild Wings

Is it dinner time yet?

NBC

I know this logo gets some acclaim, but usually nothing compared to CBS, even though I’ve always preferred this one.

Phish

While we’re on the rainbow theme, this musical group has sold so much merchandise featuring this logo it’s ridiculous.

Quake

This logo has held strong with minor variation through four game releases, numerous pieces of fan art and tattoos, you name it. Just about any gamer would recognize this at a glance.

Washington Capitals Hockey

This logo has it all wrapped up in one dynamic package; the eagle, the “W”, and the capital.

Barrack Obama

While I know I will take some grief for this selection, this logo also encapsulates a larger meaning in a simple illustration; the american flag, the “O”, the sunrise over our land (negative space in the “O” is the sun). Probably one of if not my favorite political candidate logos of all time.

Zippo

Simple concept, simple logo.

Web design was among the top marketing strategies in 2009 to increase online revenue. It will continue to be a top strategy for 2010 and well into the foreseeable future. As a web designer, I’m sure you’re happy to hear you will still have a job next year, just not surprised.

This is how we do it

Web designers and developers merge the requirements of aesthetics, usability, security, and performance; ensuring the demands of customers are met. Numerous companies will tell you that as soon as they upgraded their websites, revenue went up. This is because web designers plan and execute key online marketing strategies.

Beauty…

First, they build better online brands through pleasing and confidence inspiring design. People appreciate beauty. It’s an unavoidable fact that beautiful things garner more attention.

…is more than screen deep

Second, and perhaps more importantly, web designers make sites user friendly. This can include a host of minor improvements to calls to action, product display and many other areas of a website. Minor improvements, even those that may only effect conversion by fractions of a percent, can pay big dividends when combines with SEO and PPC marketing strategies that drive traffic.

User expectations evolve over time, often rapidly. It’s a web designer’s job to constantly be refining and updating their skills and understanding of customer habits.

Safe Shopping

Third and fourth, web developers provide technical tactics to make sites more secure and increase performance; namely increase speed and reduce errors. Often taken for granted or even under appreciated, it’s simply critical that a website works.

Combined, these requirements often are the make or break difference in the success of a website. Web designers and developers work closely with marketers, copy writers, SEO, PPC, and conversion professionals from planning through execution and launch to ensure that business goals are met and revenue increases.

That’s a lot of digits

I read a blog post from Paul Boag recently, which did a great job of illustrating this point. His web company in the UK, Headscape, helped increase online revenue for Wiltshire Farm Foods by 10,000% using predominantly web design tactics. The main points are described in this blog:

Six of the eight points are web design tactics, and the other two are customer service and marketing as it relates to messaging.

You got this one

When you’re working for a studio, web development projects are team efforts. That team includes your sales staff; they’re the front line. Here’s some tips on selling them out and getting things off to a bad start.

Skip the meetings

After the sales lead comes in, usually a meeting is set up to talk about the project. Go ahead and skip that meeting. It’s highly unlikely that any thing important will be discussed, such as their goals, target audience, and metrics for success. Even if it were discussed, you certainly don’t need this information first hand. Why make informed decisions and recommendations for the project when you can make assumptions and propose template solutions.

Send a questionnaire

Now that you’ve skipped the sales meeting, it’s time to cut corners on the analysis. Nothing spells personalized customer service like a lengthy questionnaire. Be sure to lead off with simple questions to boost their confidence, like their company name and URL. This proves to them that even if the sales person already got this information, you’re just being thorough. More importantly, ask really hard questions that require essays for answers as well as significant research into their sales numbers and web analytics. Customers like to jump through hoops. They probably have nothing better to do with their time any ways.

Copy Paste

Proposals are easy. Just have the sales guy copy some text from the last couple your company sent out and paste it into a new file. Make sure to change the date on the cover and footers. Most importantly, have sales just recycle the last estimate that sounds about right.

Don’t approve the estimate

The proposal is ready to send to the customer, you should review and approve it, right? No, but I can see why you’d think that. You need plausible deniability and a scape goat if something goes wrong. Practice saying, “I dunno what sales was thinking, they just sent it out like that before I saw it”. So, go ahead and be committed to the estimate and time line in the document. It’s probably close enough.

It’s important that the client has expectations for the project and you don’t know what they are. That keeps it interesting.

Send comps

When the customer asks for three or four samples of possible home page designs for their new site, oblige them. Without a proper discovery process, its a shot in the dark, but it’s sooo worth it. They might like yours. Don’t let not understanding how they want the site to work, the target audiences needs, or even what content you’re working with hold you back. Guess.

Have a poor contract

That mumbo jumbo at the end of the proposal probably won’t ever come into play. Go ahead and use lines like “the final payment is due after approval” and see how long it takes before a client realizes the loop hole. Besides, intellectual property rights and limitations of warranties and liabilities are just fancy words that lawyers use.

Take any project

Why be picky when you’re awesome. Your solution can fit any company. You especially want the clients that have a tight budget, pressing deadlines, and a spec that only has one phase. Typically, the client can pick two out of three; cost, time line and scope. As the design and development studio, you get the third pillar of the project. That’s just being greedy, and you’re better off letting them control everything. It’s best to never think about which client’s problems best fit you’re studios skill set and expertise.

Now that you realize you’re in a world of hurt, it’s time to look back at the questionnaire and proposal and start pointing fingers. Maybe you don’t “got this one”, but there’s always next time.

We’ve all made some mistakes. What have you done or seen done by others that’s a sure fire way to screw up a project?

The Honeymoon

The sky is a little bluer, the sun feels a little warmer, the air smells a little cleaner. The romantic babble has almost reached peak nauseousness; “who’s the best phone, you’re the best phone, I love my new phone.” Yeah it’s a little sickening unless you’re a gadget geek.

Game Changing

A popular term with roots in athletics for when a critical play occurs that has the potential to effect the outcome of the game, like in last years Super Bowl when the Steeler’s Harrison ran a 100 yard interception return for a touchdown to close out the first half. The term is now popular in the business world too. That is, in fact, what this phone is for me.

Being a fallen Apple fan boy, I never got an iPhone because I decided years ago to pay less for computers and I didn’t want to sign up with AT&T. Even though Verizon offers a variety of Blackberrys, I passed on all of them as well. For me, the Droid is a giant leap in a better direction. I am by no means a gadget expert, but I’ll share some of my initial thoughts.

The Pros

Mail

I have several Gmail accounts; not @gmail mind you, but personal (at cherryred dot org) and professional (at seo dot com) emails that are run through Gmail. It is ridiculously easy to manage multiple emails on this phone. Tap the email icon, tap menu, tap accounts and all of your email accounts are listed along with the number of new, unread messages. Simply tap the account you wish to see the inbox for. The interface is extremely responsive, so we’re talking no time at all to toggle email accounts.

Social Media

I can look at my Twitter stream in one tap. I can get to Facebook in one tap, but it takes a second to view the stream. I don’t think it could be faster unless it read my mind, which is probably Android 4.0.

Phone

Oh, that’s right, it’s a phone. Call quality is great. Voice activated dialing. Not a single complaint on the phone. Only minor issue I had was with my contact list. For some reason it imported some people “last name, first name” and others “first name, last name” so now I have to go in and edit a number of contacts.

Market

I’ve already downloaded a few apps like Twidroid, Bank of America, and Weather Channel to name a few. All super fast downloads and installs. Nothing took more than seconds from tap to use.

Maps

Not much to say here without a picture, but the integrated Google Maps is brilliant and beautifully functional. You won’t need a separate GPS.

Video

The video quality is great.

All the small things

There are too many to list. I know I haven’t found them all, but there are a lot of little things that just make the phone a pleasure to use. The on screen keyboard is responsive and perhaps more accurate than my fingers would have thought. One push of a button on the top of the phone and you can instantly lock the screen and put it in sleep mode. One more click, then rotary style “swoosh” of your finger and it’s active again. I’ve gotten my share of pocket dials and sent plenty too. I don’t think I’ll be making any pocket dials this time. The main “back, menu, home, search” buttons at the bottom of the phone are pairs with a tenth of a second light vibration to confirm you pushed it. I like that kind of interface feedback. There is a screen for battery life that shows each line item and what percent of the battery its consuming so you can fine tune your usage. I digress.

The Cons

This is a short list. I can’t tether it to my laptop yet. The camera software doesn’t seem to consistently focus, which combined with a bit of a delay made for several deleted pics already. However, it seems that if you use the on screen “take picture” icon instead of the button on the side of the phone, it’s noticeably more responsive. I haven’t had enough time to test this out completely. Not sure I like this hard, clear acrylic case accessory that doesn’t seem to get along 100% with the slide out keyboard. I may trade it in for the soft shell case. That might bother me the most since I’m always holding it. Only other issue is I haven’t figured out how to get my PC to recognize it*. All in all, nothing that can’t be fixed, or won’t be possible with future updates.

Props to Verizon

I don’t normally go out of my way to compliment good customer service, since so often these days customer service seems to be a lost art form. This is not the case for Verizon, at least not this week. All of the calls I made trying to squeeze info out of local sales representatives was met with enthusiasm and honestly, they probably talked to me longer on the phone than they should have. I was pleased that the people I spoke with were genuinely enthusiastic about the new product. The in-store staff for the Snowden River store were great on Friday morning. Props to Tony (my sales guy) and Rob (the tech). First time in a while I walked out of any store thinking, now that was a good shopping experience. Verizon also nailed the marketing in my opinion. Cool commercials. Big, but not overbearing presence on Twitter and other social media. Props to Sherri (@VZWPRDC). They seem to know right where to go to get their message in front of early adopters and technophiles. All three of you should tell your bosses that this random guy, Mike, thinks you did a great job.

Summary

The new Droid is worth every penny and I suspect a few months from now I will still feel that way. I will now go back to ocean front beach chair, basking in the sun, sipping a fruity drink with an umbrella.

(* update – now that I’ve had 5 mins to try to get it connected to my computer, it is. Plug it in via the USB cable, drag down the notification bar on the phone, and click “mount”. Easy, but I have read of people with Vista 64-bit issues even though that’s what I have.)

Twitter

Twitter (@mtbenson) is becoming the professional hub for my social media presence due to:

1. Focus

2. Relevancy

3. Time Commitment

4. User Permissions

5. User Extensibility

6. Adoption Rate

1. The tool is simple and effective. They have built a system to do one thing; broadcast messages. It does that one thing very well and that enables users to share and discover what’s going on in the world or their neck of the woods “right now”.

2. Twitter is as real-time as it gets. If it’s old news, it gets pushed down really fast. If it’s major, it rises really fast. Trending topics also help make it even more obvious what’s going on. Simple, huh?

3. You can keep Twitter to a minimal time commitment. The feed is easy to scan because the inherent nature of tiny, bite size pieces of information. Even if a message is an utter waste of time, and many are, at least the time sink is a bare minimum with only 140 characters to read.

4. I don’t need permission to read messages from people of value. I’ve developed criteria for who I follow based on glancing at their page which has made things easier. In general what I am looking for is if the person is actively adding value to and extracting value from the community, or spamming it. I look at their bio. They need to have one. It needs to have some keywords in which I am interested. If there is no bio, that’s a yellow flag. If the bio says things like “get rich online, here’s how” that’s a red flag. I look at their following/follower/tweet numbers. If they are following 0, that’s an red flag. If they are following 8,173 people and have 4 followers, that’s a yellow flag since they are probably using a service to automate their list. If they have 10,364 tweets, they’re probably a spammer, so that’s a red flag. Next I look at their tweets. If the entire first page is in the format of copy that sounds like the title of a post and a URL, that’s a red flag. What I want to see are some @’s and some RT’s; those indicate human interaction. All in all, this has made my feed much more informative and reduces the time I need to scan through it.

The inverse is also important. Other people don’t need my permission to read my messages.

This allows me to get to know what other people are thinking in a low-impact, non-invasive manner and vice versa.

5. Users have made the system easier to use through RT, @, $ and # tags. Twitter is now the only individual site search (the only search tool other than Google) I use because of tagging. And that’s saying something.

6. Everyone is there. If they aren’t, they should be. Twitter may be the first to one billion.

For those reasons, Twitter has become the most effective social media tool for my professional life. Unfortunately for them I spend most of my time on their service not on their website, but rather through TweetDeck. Since it’s becoming more of a medium than a destination, how long before others try to paint it a different way? That’s my only concern at the moment for Twitter.

Facebook

Although Facebook (/mikebenson) still gets more of my time, it has receded from an all-in-one to a personal hub for my social media activity due to its:

1. Bonds

2. Media

3. Auto-biographical nature

4. User Permissions

1. Facebook creates a more personal, intimate environment, which allows users to develop deeper bonds and share a richer experience. There are people that I now have stronger relationships with because of Facebook.

2. It’s easy to consume media within Facebook. I know Twitter can share links, but Facebook gives you a screenshot of the page you’re about to navigate to, so there is a better sense of comfort. You can share and watch videos directly within your stream. And perhaps most importantly, you can share photos, even creating albums. Through these types of media, Facebook does a fantastic job of capturing your life.

3. Through the whole of its feature set, Facebook essentially documents your life in chronological order. Hundreds or even a thousand years down the road (assuming we last that long) society on a macro level and people on a micro level will be less a mystery. No longer will cultural anthropologists or historians have to wonder what a person was thinking at the time they wrote a book, committed a heinous or heroic act, made a discovery, etc (assuming the data persists and is uncorrupted).

4. People do need permission to read my posts and updates. Further more, I can fine tune permissions on a line item level.

80 20

I predict that for the near future…

80% of my social media time will be on Facebook. I will get 80% of my personal value from it, but only 20% professional value. It would be a lot less than 20% professional value if I didn’t have access to valuable opinions on my work among my network of friends and colleagues.

20% of my time will be on Twitter. I will get 80% of my professional value from it, and only 20% personal value.

First impressions

It’s really blown me away the mistakes some people insist on making during an interview even though there is a wealth of coaching available for free online even when common sense doesn’t prevail. For example, you better do your homework on the company your applying to.

When you are asked what you how you can make a contribution to the company, don’t answer a question with, “What is it you guys do exactly?”

When I pick up on this weakness immediately, and I will, and ask what you know about my company, the correct answer is not, “Well, I haven’t really spent much time on your site…”

And, please, have a good answer ready for why you want to work for [company name]. This is not the time to discuss how bad the economy is and how unemployment has affected you.

It’s a good thing the interviews I’ve been conducting this past week were all on the phone because my face has been screaming “What? Seriously?” on a too many occasions.

I guess there is a first time for everything

I can’t believe I’m even typing this, but if you’re applying to a web designer position, have a web design portfolio ready to show.
One applicant didn’t and that’s how I got a gun pulled on me. I asked for samples and was emailed during the call with a portrait of a person holding a gun at the camera with some Photoshop filters. Can’t say I’ve ever had that happen before.

Thug life

Your portfolio should as much as possible, reflect client work, not personal projects. Yes. I am interested in your pet projects and hobbies. But. I want to see your client work first. I don’t want to hear excuses about how clients ruin all your work. You need to succeed with clients, perhaps even in spite of them. That’s what you’re being hired to do. After you’ve proven you can bring the best to professional projects, then by all means, show me your photography collection or comic books you’ve drawn. I really do appreciate when people have a passion for design outside a professional setting.

In defense of the person who sent me the gun pic, they did follow up with a much more professional, online portfolio at my suggestion.

In the meantime, keep it holstered.

Ten years ago, websites were largely brochure-ware and widely considered disposable. It was not uncommon for a company to roll out a new website annually. Eliminating waste is a popular topic these days, and many companies are employing strategies to get the most out of their online budgets.

Today, it is not uncommon for a website to last years. Companies are stretching their dollars by investing early and adopting the process of steady, ongoing improvements.

Set a winning strategy

Spending time and money early in the life-cycle of your website has greater impact on your business’ success. Not only do the decisions you make have longer shelf life, but the process is also cheaper at this stage.

Good web development teams approach your project with purpose.

You’ll want to reach a deep understanding of your company, your brand, and the target audience; run through a competitive analysis to set the playing field; and outline your online strategies and how they fit into your overall corporate mission. Many refer to this as the discovery phase, and essentially this is when the team does its homework. These are all great investments of your time.

The result is you will get better recommendations on what creative and technical tactics will best support your goals, meet your objectives, attack your competitor’s strengths and exploit their weaknesses.

Rally the troops

This is the time to get opinions from within your company. Before the first pixel of your website is onscreen, there will be consensus on what the team is setting out to do and why. The value of later choices will be measured against these early decisions. This will save waste, therefore minimizing costs. Anyone who opts out of participating in these early stages of web development shouldn’t get to cast votes during beta testing. If they’d like, they can cheer lead from the sidelines.

The storm before the calm

You’ve got the team dressed. You know your opponent’s playbook. The excitement in the locker room is palatable. But, you’re not ready to charge out and take the field. It’s time to wire frame the most important pages on your website and storyboard technical components. Planning is critical. Would you live in a house erected by an architect who built it without blueprints? Would you be confident enough to drive a car that rolled down an assembly line without plans?

At this point in the process, change is rapid and cheap. Figuratively speaking, it’s only on paper. Think, get opinions and feedback, work and rework ideas, explore options, and make changes as until the team is satisfied. Approving a wireframe or storyboard is not a point of no return, but it is the last time “what if…” and “hey, what about…” are cheap questions to answer.

It’s all over but the shouting.

Now it’s time to build without second guessing yourself. The team already knows the site is being built right, so any change will be minor. The development environment is not the cheapest place for change, but it is cheaper than fixing the live site in a panic. Additionally, any major change will negatively impact the budget and time line. Since you’re already planning on iterative improvements, major changes can be built into the game plan for later phases, or simply avoided.

As exciting as launching the site will be, for some it will be anticlimactic.

Ok, more shouting.

Once your site is built correctly, you can minimize your website expenses and concentrate your efforts on marketing and promotion. This is where the money rightfully should be spent in order to maximize your revenue. You can confidently drive traffic into your sales engine, knowing it’s built to win.

The road to relevance

New websites are no longer the key to being perceived as fresh and relevant. Today, we know that’s the responsibility for writers, bloggers and marketers and in many cases consumers themselves as we engage in two-way conversations.

Learn from the examples of some of today’s web giants, like Amazon.com and Apple. I bet you can’t remember the last time you saw a major change on either site; they’ve effectively looked the same for years. But, I bet they made small improvements last week. The best websites don’t need to be redesigned unless their purpose changes.

Change is cheapest at the beginning of the process and progressively gets more expensive. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to invest early and make improvement a steady, iterative process. After the foundation is set, you study metrics, analyze conversions, and act accordingly. Very rarely do you make a mistake through this system of checks and balances, let alone one you can’t recover from quickly. This approach is better for your brand, your budget and your customers.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t get much work done today. I spent far more time looking at corvettes. Since it was a Saturday, who can complain. The moral of the story is if your workplace is mobile, you can pick up and go when you want to.

Taking the show on the road

Two brothers bought the fairgrounds in Carlisle, PA, turned it into a car show haven, and do about 12-14 events a year. This weekend was the annual corvette show, a showcase for the vette’s of then and now.

Then

Now

There were vintage racers.

'61 Gulf Oil Sebring racer

And, just plain vintage. Little do the owners of this vehicle know, it should be mine.

'61

Of course there are plenty of modern vettes, including the latest and greatest models brought in from dealers. This ‘10 sported some jaw dropping numbers on its MSRP sticker; a whopping 638hp and a price tag of $120k to go with it. The 0 to 60 for the vehicle was listed at 3.4 seconds. Think for a moment just how much power that is.

'10 638hp

Flexibility

I didn’t feel guilty that not much was accomplished for work back at the hotel that afternoon. I only had a couple of things I wanted to get done. Its nice knowing I have set up my work environment to be mobile, so that I can get something done on a weekend trip if I want to. More often than not, I don’t have to compromise between the life and work. I know some people are probably wondering why I would worry about this at all, why even bring my laptop. To put it simply, I like my company and my job. Working hard (and smart) is just part of who I am.