The Real Internet Company

After selling my website development company in 2010, I had to turn down a steady stream of website development work. I tried various options – outsourcing, doing it myself, and passing work on to others, until eventually I teamed up with two other old hands, and The Real Internet Company was created.

Case Study: Supermarket Shopping Cart Integration with a Magento Online Store

Linking an online shop selling personalised photo gifts with a major UK supermarket’s own shopping cart.

Case Study: Global Transport Company Linking Peoplesoft and Tivoli to Online Store

A global transportation giant contracted “Acme Inc” to provide promotional merchandise world-wide, and “Acme” needed my help to link their store to Peoplesoft eProcurement and Tivoli Access Manager to allow seamless electronic ordering for staff in various countries.

My Own Estate Agent

A Lancashire property expert approached me in 2010 to talk about his vision for a “for sale by owner” or “how to sell my house myself” website. His experience in this sector and passion for the idea of using twitter, facebook and the Internet in general to allow people to sell their houses themselves was [...]

Communicating Your Worth to Customers for Small Business Owners

I recently read a superb article about communicating your value by Carrie Foster.  Carrie is a management development coach and writes insightful articles about how to get the best out of individuals in an organisation, and this article was aimed at employees who want to get more out of their jobs. I got thinking about how [...]

Three Dirty Secrets of Pricing for Web Design, Graphic Design and Software Development

There is some risk in writing an article like this.  It discusses pricing for professional services; getting it wrong in either direction can cause problems for the supplier, customer or both, and the risk is that the problems and solutions outlined are misunderstood.  However, the principles I’ll describe below ultimately benefits the end customer, and [...]

Get Your Spark Back; Do Something Completely Different

A very perceptive lady once told me, at a difficult time in my life, “If things aren’t going the way you want them to, change something.” It sounds obvious, but those words stuck with me – the key point being that I needed to change something, not just mope around hoping something would change. I [...]

Speak Your Customer’s Love Language

Or, How to Fail at IT Service Delivery I recently read a book aimed at improving relationships and began to wonder how the same theory could be applied to business.  I’ll briefly summarise the book, and then examine how the theory (I will call it a theory even though it’s reasonably well proven and makes [...]

Get Off Benefits and Get Back To Work

That title is likely to evoke strong feelings in almost anyone.  Don’t judge yet, just read! I think I understand both sides of this based on a variety of experiences; being brought up in a regular middle class family, then meeting a new set of people for whom working was unusual, then going through a [...]

Web Designers, Marketers and Software Developers, how efficient is your business?

In this article, I’ll have a go at explaining a measure of business efficiency which I heard described by Nic Rixon (if you ever get a chance to see this guy, do it) in a business growth seminar, which he calls a “Run Rate”.  The term Run Rate is normally used to describe a company’s [...]