Case Study: Cagintranet
Can we talk about my web designer for a minute? Oh. I guess you don’t know him. Well, I do. And you should. His name is Chris Cagle and he blows my mind.
Everybody and their brother can call themselves a web designer these days. All you have to do is slap some html together, and all of a sudden you’re hanging up your shingle. Chris is the real deal, though, and he has saved my butt throughout the web design process.
Chris held my hand throughout the whole thing. When I called him in a panic saying that I was going to be a Problogger sponsor in the grand total of four days, he calmed me down and told me not to worry, he could do it. And he did. When I realized 36 hours before my launch that it might be a good idea to have StumbleUpon and Digg buttons, and change the location of my comments, and figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with Feedburner, he was calm and professional and made it all happen.
This is what’s great about Chris. He creates clean designs. He knows that the point of a website is communication - with your readers, your customers, or your friends. He knows how to get a point across without cluttering up your site with a bunch of useless widgets or unnecessary words.
Here’s what Chris says about Cagintranet:
“A small, yet highly focused design studio built on exceptional work, great relationships and an uncanny knack for the creative.”
It’s so true. When I first called Chris, he picked up on the second ring. We talked about my site. We talked about our kids. We just talked about stuff. He got back to me with a totally reasonable proposal really quickly, and off we went. I later found out that the entire point of Chris’ existence is not actually to pacify me at all hours of the night. He also has a day job with a major financial corporation in Pennsylvania and a wife and a 13-month old and other clients. Not that I would know - he was totally focused on me and what I needed throughout.
I found Chris through his blog, AdClustr. Chris doesn’t like ugly ads. I like people who don’t like ugly ads. He has some great ideas for ad integration and features examples from real, live blogs. This is important, because there are so many people around the blogosphere that think they have a clue what they’re talking about but can’t point to an example of it. They rant and storm about theoreticals, but that’s very little use to a new blogger who doesn’t understand the terminology. Chris obviously puts his experience as a web designer to good use here and explains things well. Here are some cool things floating around in his blog:
Help Yourself By Cloaking Affiliate Links
12 Ways to Force Your RSS Feeds To Earn Money
Have Happy Customers? Give Them What They Want!
Check out his web design site. Check out his blog. When you’re ready to launch your home business website or redesign your blog, this is the place to go.
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