Found a super article on “How to Google Like Google Googles” at PCWorld today.  Here are a couple of my favorites tips:

1. It is a constant battle with my middle and high school students to get them to use “authoritative sources” for school work (“but Mooooom, EVERYONE uses Wikipedia and my teachers don’t care!”).  Having seen for myself the misinformation purposely posted on Wikipedia, I still insist on .edu, .gov, etc. sites for research and this tip makes that a bit easier (though the battle rages on…)

   Search certain types of sites or just certain sites. You can search a wide variety of sites by inserting a close angle bracket (>) symbol before the type of site you want to search. For example, [penguins site:>.edu] searches for penguins across all .edu sites; and [crater image site:>nasa.gov] searches for crater images across NASA.gov.

2. Would have been soooo helpful on my three day, agonizing move across the country last year with the dog, two distraught teenagers and a dying minivan:

   Find hotel prices directly on Google Maps. No more copying and pasting the address from one site into a map to see its location–for several major cities in the United States, you can easily see nightly rates when you search for hotels in Google Maps. Try it now: Search for a “hotel in Los Angeles” on Google Maps

3. Not a particularly helpful tip, but makes you really want to be a “Google Master” doesn’t it?  Or is that just me???

   Gmail is a very deep program, with too many tips and tricks to list in this article. In fact, Google categorizes its Gmail user tips into four stages–white belt, green belt, black belt, and master. The tips for each belt can be found at Google’s “Become a Gmail ninja” site. There’s even a printible guide; after all, even ninjas forget their moves once in a while.

I recently provided a client with a list of non-flash animation options (a.k.a. JavaScript plug-ins) for their new home page banner image area. My good friend Wendy Honeycutt came up with a great list that I thought I’d share:

• http://tympanus.net/codrops/category/tutorials/
• http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/HoverSlideEffect/
• http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CompactNewsPreviewer/
• http://www.serie3.info/s3slider/demonstration.html
• http://galleria.aino.se/
• http://www.gcmingati.net/wordpress/wp-content/lab/jquery/svwt/index.html
• http://css-tricks.com/examples/StartStopSlider/
• http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/image-rotator/
• http://jqueryglobe.com/labs/slide_thumbs/

*Note: most JavaScript plug-in apps are customizable. Thus, the speed of image rotation, background colors, font styles, and transparencies can be adjusted.  Some really cool stuff out here!!

What are your favorite sites for JavaScript plug-ins?

We spend a lot of time at Beacon, and I mean A LOT, cross-browser testing – to the point that sometimes I feel like I do nothing else! Perhaps that’s why I got such a chuckle out of this great image from “The Shoze Blog“.  Enjoy!

Browser Wars

I found this article very interesting (and annoying??) and wanted to share: FYI: Your site’s email newsletter affects your Google rankings.  What’s next???  Maybe they will start checking Google maps to make sure we have sufficient numbers of cars parking in our lot each day??  Groan!

Full disclosure– Google rankings isn’t my area of expertise, but my colleagues in our Web Marketing department are experts in this area, so be sure to contact us if you have questions!

P.S.  Apparently there’s been some controversy over this article since it was original posted on May 31  and some alternate and contradictory views have been posted on the same site, including some input from Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, so be sure to get all the sides on this issue!

After looking at nearly 70,000 images for hours upon end, trying to figure how in the world I was going to figure out (this century) which files I was missing from a recent product upload, I hopefully typed the title of this entry into Google very late on  Saturday night.  Sure enough, I was thrilled to find the article “How to save a list of files in a folder” at the scarily named “Bloody Computer” blog site.

And the answer to my quandary?  From a command prompt, change to the directory that has the files you need to locate, and type:

dir /a-d /b > filelist.txt

In virtually no time, a text file is created with each file in the directory listed, which I could then easily copy/paste into Excel and find my missing files with a vlookup command.  This even works from a mapped network drive, which is exactly what I needed.  Thank you Jsanderz – whoever you are – you saved my weekend!

I’ve already blogged about each of the sessions that I attended on Day One and Day Two of the conference, but feel compelled to share my overall impressions as well…

Overall, a very successful conference!  I learned a lot and am excited to go back to the office and put it into practice.  I also met many other people using the product to do some really interesting and exciting things.  I’m comforted that Vortx has committed to maintaining the same (or better!) level of support and community that I’d come to expect from the previous owners and I recognize their sincere commitment to high standards and dedication to the product.

Because I can’t seem to write a blog without a bulleted list, here are some other quick thoughts:

• I think the length of the conference was just right.  Three days would have strung it out too much and one would have been way too crammed.
• Not sure how I feel about the two “track” approach.  There were several sessions that were held simultaneously that I wish I could have attended.  Unfortunately, I’m not really sure how to fix that and still keep the two day format.  It would have been great to have gotten the agenda a little bit in advance so that we could have made the decisions about “who’s going to what” in advance.
• HURRAY for the organizers that got the coffee flowing all day on Thursday!  Even the most dedicated of developers start to get hazy around 3pm in a darkened room without a caffeine jolt.
• The staff (both hotel and Vortx) was extremely responsive and helpful
• Sessions and breaks were well timed and everything started and ended precisely on schedule
• The master of ceremonies/magician/announcer was brilliant…  Bravo!
• I think the conference could have benefited from an “Ask the Experts” or other open brainstorming-type session.  Despite very active forums and helpful support, there’s really nothing like sitting down with one of the “inside guys” and picking his brain.  Lots of times I don’t really need to know exactly how to do something, just whether or not there’s an easy way to do it (vs. the dreaded source code modification!) or if there’s an add-on out there that already does it (bonus!).  To keep the session from getting too detailed or bogged down, maybe asking for questions ahead of time would be effective?
• Organizers did a good job of making sure that the participants did not feel that every vendor was trying to push their products on them, but I do wish there were a few more hands-on examples of how to do things in the product itself.  I don’t mind seeing a vendor’s solution in action during a session as long as it solves my problem and it isn’t a hard sell.  I don’t feel like any of the vendors that I met would do that, but that they did feel constrained to not advocate their products too much.
• Post the slide decks to the presentations immediately after the session if at all possible.  Alternatively, make it very obvious (maybe in the agenda booklet) exactly how and when the slides would be available.  Someone asked about the availability of the decks at every single session that I attended and there was lots of confusion about where and if they would be available.

Keep the up the enthusiasm and commitment to being a company with very high standards and commitment to the AspDotNetStorefront community!  This was clear in every facet of the conference and made me proud to be associated with you all!  WELL DONE!

Welcome back to the play by play of my experiences at the 2011 AspDotNetStorefront Conference in Las Vegas.  Day One down, Day Two here we come…  Another incredibly informative day and I leave lots smarter and excited to start our newest AspDotNetstorefront project!

Developer’s Clinic– Technically the “developer’s clinic” was to allow the developers to bring solutions to coding problems that were e-mailed to them in advance.  The questions were way beyond my meager programming skills though (I leave that to our awesome developers!), but I did come to the conference armed with sixteen “how to” questions.  Since I didn’t see anywhere else on the schedule to ask my particular questions (and 90% of them would really bore an audience anyway), I invaded the developer’s clinic area and basically begged the unlucky AspDotNetStorefront staff member there for assistance.  Josh Belden was kind enough to indulge me, even after I pulled out the notebook with my myriad of questions.  He worked through each item with me patiently and didn’t once roll his eyes!

This is really the reason that we selected AspDotNetStorefront as a shopping cart in the first place – the exceedingly helpful support and active developers community.  I’m so pleased to find out that that spirit of sharing and community continues at Vortx and couldn’t be happier about the assistance that Josh provided.  Trying not to sound too gushy, but this 30 minutes of one-on-one consultation likely saved me hours of research and analysis.  I’d suggest that next year, rather than a “Developer’s Clinic”, which seemed rather sparsely attended, there be an “Ask the Experts” booth, where conference attendees can go to brainstorm with the experts.  Thanks Josh!!

Session 7B, “jQuery” by Dan Heberden, jQuery – This session also turned out to be too technical for my poor project manager brain (there’s only so many dollar signs and curly brackets my head can take!), but the developer that attended the conference with me was positively giddy.  “We can do everything in jQuery!” she said, which I really liked to hear.  I learned enough to know that jQuery is going to give us a more interactive user experience without sacrificing performance or having to edit source code (which I avoid like the plague if I possibly can).  Dan was incredibly knowledgeable on the subject and provided a list of resources which I plan to add to our corporate knowledgebase:

• http://www.learningjquery.com
• http://www.jqfundamentals.com
• http://api.jquery.com

Lunchtime announcements– We anxiously awaited the big announcements that were shared by Dana Greaves, CEO of AspDotNetStorefront and Vortx, during the lunch session:

• Of most immediate interest to me personally– Version 9.1 of ML was released today, which should offer many fixes and enhancements to the ML9 product with minimal impact to current custom code
• Change in licensing– Instead of being forced to purchase Multi-Store in 5-pack units, the product is now available in single store units, with the future option to purchase additional stores at a discounted rate
• Several promotions and discounts available to conference attendees were announced
• New branding/naming for the ML9 product as “MSx” (I think??)

Session 8B, “Design + Master Pages”, by Chris McKellar and George Solomon (Vibe Commerce) – I was anxious to attend this session because I’ve worked with Vibe several times in the past and have heard both Chris and George speak before.  They are both extremely knowledgeable about AspDotNetStorefront and very good public speakers and I was not disappointed.  One thing that stood out about this session, among the others, was specific examples of AspDotNetstorefront sites that used the principals in the talk.  They also did a good job of bridging the gap between the true developers in the room and those of us that have to make business decisions based on the technology.

Chris began with a nice overview of the psychology of design and prompted us to consider a number of different factors when designing and developing a site:

• Make sure the user experience is seamless and simple – “Make it so good they don’t notice”
• Understand exactly what you want the customer to do and how that goal can be accomplished
• Modern designs tend to have:
  • Less “ads” and/or call to actions in the site header (instead reserved for informational/account-related content)
  • Search box tends to be large and in the middle of the top nav bar
  • Tabs have been replaced with “mega-menus” and photography is leveraged to provide an emotional response
• Consistency in site design and presentation is KEY!
• Category landing and search results pages should look exactly the same to provide a seamless shopping experience
• Use whitespace/negative space wisely and generously… Let the site “breathe”
• Use appropriate color triggers– warm colors for strong emotions and immediate response (call to actions, promotions) and cool colors for calmness and serenity
• Provide the customer with a confirmation page before the final order is placed to increase consumer confidence

Next, George provided a summary of “Master Pages” and why we should be excited to use them.  As someone who has been reluctant to upgrade for this very reason, this was a very informative part of the session for me.  I learned the following (do I dare say I’m sold??):

• Master pages provide an effective way to establish a consistent layout throughout the website as well as separating the functionality from the design in order to enable team members to develop on different pieces of the same site simultaneously.
• When deployed correctly, there can be a performance boost for the end-users on an AspDotNetStorefront site using Master Pages
• Using Master Pages allows a service company to bring any .NET developer up to speed quickly on an AspDotNetStorefront site, whereas earlier versions often required a fairly high learning curve for both designers and developers
• There will potentially be more third party controls and add-ons available for a site based on Master Pages, due to its inherent extendability
• Applying styles and switching themes are easier with Master Pages
• .NET only allows one “run-at” form per page and AspDotNetStorefront uses that, so other sub-forms on the page (search box, newsletter submissions) must be implemented using .NET controls.
• Sites should be easier to develop and deploy using Master Pages (fingers crossed!)

Session 9B, “Stump the Experts” with Jesse Hodges, Josh Belden, Jason Addington (all of AspDotNetStorefront/Vortx) and George Solomon (Vibe Commerce) – The organizer’s intention was to make this kind of a “game” where the audience would write down questions that they knew the answers to and try to stump the expert panel.  This started pretty slowly, as most of us were unprepared and thought it would be more of an open brain-storming session (and personally, I still wish it had been), but it turned out fun in the end (I won a bag with a cheater question) with lots of laughs and trash talking.  I didn’t really learn a whole lot, except for one thing, which was probably the most important of all—these guys are really, really smart and they know what they are doing– period.  With a program that easily has tens of thousands of lines of code, they could quickly and easily spout of the exact name of a stored procedure and how to modify the code to get the desired effect.  They are proud of the work that they do and readily think outside the box to solve a problem.  Good enough for me!

I leave Las Vegas tired from a long couple of days, but full of energy and excitement about the product and the company that now owns it.  Congrats to all involved for hosting such a successful event!

I have the great opportunity this week of attending the ASPDotNetStorefront Conference in Las Vegas, hosted by Vortx (the new owners of the e-commerce shopping cart that Beacon has been implementing for about four years).  The conference is divided into two tracks– developers and merchants– and, being neither ;), I’m bouncing back and forth between the tracks, based on the topic.  Here are my thoughts and discoveries thus far:

Session 1 “Fearless Source Code Modification” by John Morrison, Morrison Consulting- I’d hoped this session would be focused on best practices to safely make source code modifications to the ASPDNSF code, which we do often.  It was actually a session on source control and was a bit too technical for me.  However, I’m sure that many of the developers in the room benefited from the information and I plan to take the information back to the office to have our DBA investigate both VisualSVN and TortoiseSVN to advance our internal code management to “vendor branch management”.

Session 2 “Email Marketing – Beyond the Basics” by Kristine Dobson (Email Direct) and Ross Kramer (Listrak) – Really enjoyed this session a lot.  Not really related to ASPDNSF per se, but lots of awesome information about creating email campaigns.  A small glimpse of what I learned:

Email Marketing

• The most effective campaigns are scheduled on a rigidly consistent schedule.  The most common frequency is bi-weekly, but also consider weekly or daily
• Consider sending an “email series” rather than single emails to new customers for maximum effectiveness
• Be sure to test mailings for email rendering and inbox delivery as well as content
• Items that can cause email non-delivery (particularly in Outlook, which is particularly content sensitive)
  • Trigger words (dear, free, mortgage)
  • Spelling errors
  • Using all caps
  • Not using consistent font size and face
  • !!!!, % and $ (particularly in subject)
  • Red font
  • Highlighted copy
  • Subject lines longer than 50 characters

Shopping Cart Abandonment

• Though stats vary, approximately 60-75% of shoppers ultimately abandon their online carts.  This is a huge opportunity to recoup sales through email marketing.
• Recommend a series of email to the customer, sometimes offering promotions/discounts and sometimes just reminding the shopper of items in their cart (or upsell related items)
• Carefully test the content and timing of the remarketing campaigns
• If applicable, offer the customer an easy way to find the products in a local store rather than online in the email
• Some customers respond very well to links to product videos in email and/or product reviews

Session 3 “Payment Methods” by Alex Brutin, Moneybookers/Skrill and Jason Doll, Amazon Payments- A very interesting session about alternatives to the traditional credit card payment.  In Europe, for example, credit cards are very rarely carried or used for online purchases, in favor of local credit sources, debit cards, or bank transfer.  Skrill will soon release an electronic wallet product in the U.S., much like PayPal, that will allow U.S.-based online stores to more easily accept payment from European countries in their preferred method of payment (potentially increasing conversions).

Likewise, Amazon Payments will soon be releasing an integration with Aspdotnetstorefront that will allow the visitor to check out of the online store using the address book and payment information already stored in their Amazon account, without leaving the online store.  Previously, Amazon Payment required a rebranded window that left the online store, which reduced the options for upselling.  This new interface will be a widget that will be included on the site’s checkout page and will never cause the customer to leave the site.  Since there are over 100 million Amazon account holders, this has a tremendous potential for increasing conversion rates.

Session 4 “Product Feeds” by Ryan Douglas, Singlefeed – The presenter described his own experience with a retail online store and the difficulty of maintaining data integrity.  He described how essential it is to maintain very good data, in particular with regard to feeding data to comparative shopping engines.  The accuracy and descriptiveness of your data can make a huge difference in a purchase selection between identical products listed in a shopping engine.  He highly recommended, in addition to the traditional required fields like product name and description, to maintain UPC, brand/manufacturer and model number for every product in your store.  UPC codes are particularly essential for the new mobile apps that allow the customer to scan a barcode and find the product online.  He also recommended listing product attributes like color and size as separate fields so that they can be more easily denoted in the comparison.  Also give very close consideration to product title and include as much relevant information as possible (color, size, brand) in the product name so that it can be easily understood outside the context of the online store.

Session 5 “Interacting With Customers” by Michael Teitelbaum, Velaro and Ian Rowley, WhosOn – These presenters each shared their online chat programs with the audience and gave very valid arguments as to why chat should be implemented in most online stores in order to add a necessary “touch point” for the customer.    There are two main chat formats– reactive chat and proactive chat.  Reactive chat is initiated by the customer in response to graphics/icons located on the site indicating that chat is available.  It was recommended that the chat icon be placed prominently on the home page as well as any other location that the customer is likely to “show intent” (like a product detail page) and anywhere that customers traditionally abandon the cart (checkout, shipping policies, etc.).  Proactive chat is an invitation to the customer that pop-up for the customer when they attempt or initiate some action.  For example, if a customer spends a certain period of time on a page, navigates to a particular page, adds certain items to their cart or is a “high value customer” could all prompt a proactive chat invitation.  Proactive chat is usually more than twice as effective as reactive chat.

Including chat in an online store has proven to significantly reduce call volume in call centers and is more efficient than phone banks because most agents can field more than one chat at a time (as many as four, in fact!).  Once involved in a chat, the agent can view the customer’s order history, browse history, referring sites, referring keywords, etc.  The speed and efficiency of the chat can be improved by implementing pre-made messages and links, so that the agent does not have to type answers to many routinely asked questions.  This is essential, because customers expect that there will be no queue when waiting for a chat response.

Good job to all of today’s presenters… Looking forward to tomorrow!

See a summary of “Day Two” here…

Recently I asked a coworker about the dress code for an upcoming company party that I would be attending and he snidely responded that it was “normal business attire, so in your case, you are welcome to wear your PJs!” – which then became the inspiration for this blog post.  I’ve been working remotely from my home for six months now, after a move from North Carolina to Denver, and thought it was about time to sit down and assess the world of the “Remote Office”. What works, what doesn’t?

1. Get the highest quality and fastest Internet and phone connections available– I had been a Vonage customer for many years, but when it came down to great voice quality for conference calls, VOIP just didn’t cut it.  I had to go with the old-fashioned land line and have been much happier with the quality.  For Internet access, I opted for a cable broadband rather than DSL for the faster speed.
2. Separate your work day from your personal day– Despite the temptation to take a coffee break with my husband or start a load of laundry, I find that I’m much more focused if I reserve personal tasks and responsibilities for before or after my official work hours.  Far too easy to ease from a load of laundry, to ironing one shirt, to emptying the dishwasher, when my priority in during the day is my work duties.  Along the same lines, though, when the work day is over, you’ve got to peel yourself away.  It is so tempting to keep working on that overdue proposal while the kids are telling you about their day, but not very satisfying for either party.
3. Resist the temptation to drag yourself straight from bed to the office chair– For me, this means getting dressed, making my bed, making a cup of coffee and then “going to the office” (at the other end of the house).  Except for the rare 6 a.m. meeting (due to clients in EST) where I’ll admit to unbrushed hair and pink fleece PJs, I find that I am much more alert and prepared if I’ve gotten up a little earlier and put myself together.  As this article states, “People who get dressed properly each morning tend to have higher productivity and feel better about themselves.”
4. Have many ways to be accessible– “Out of sight, out of mind” is not a pleasant experience when it comes to the business world.  In my case, I’m always available via email, land-line phone, cell phone and instant messenger during my business hours, so if one isn’t working (darn you, road construction crew that took out my Internet!), the others will keep me “in touch”.  I have considered adding a fax machine to the mix, but so far scanning and email has worked sufficiently, so I haven’t made that investment.  I also have mapped out several local spots that have free wireless Internet, so if all else fails, I can evacuate to the local coffee shop for Internet access (yum!).
5. Make your availability and schedule very clear– Make sure that everyone is completely aware of your working hours and ways to contact you (both before, during and after business hours).  This goes for clients as well as coworkers.  Stick closely to those hours (no “early in, early out” attitudes!) and during those working hours, respond promptly to all communications so that there’s absolutely no doubt that you are online and open for business.
6. Be a good and attentive participant in staff meetings– So very tempting to finish up that report and send a quick email while someone else has the floor at the staff meeting, especially if you are on “mute”, but your co-workers expect and deserve your full attention, so give it to them!
7. Take very good care of your equipment– I’m 2400 miles from the company’s tech support, so I make sure that my laptop is in a safe environment (free of dust, heat, etc.) and is backed up regularly to an external source.
   
8. Have your own space– It is generally not “ok” to abscond with the kitchen table for your office paraphernalia.  If possible, have your own space (mine is the unused formal dining room, converted to my personal office) where others can’t leave (and spill) half-open cans of soda.
9. Figure out the time zones!– I will be the first to confess that I’m the WORST at time zones.  If it weren’t for DVR, we wouldn’t see any of our favorite TV shows, because I simply can’t figure out what is on when!  So, I have to pay special close attention to time zones when I’m scheduling meetings.  Outlook handles this pretty well, but make sure that you have time zones set correctly:

1.  On the Tools menu, click Options.
2.  On the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options.
3.  Under Advanced Options, click Time Zone.
4.  Choose a time zone from the drop-down list, and then click OK.
5.  Also also consider displaying another time zone in Outlook by selecting the “Show an additional time zone check box in the Time Zone dialog box”. The second time zone is used only to show a second time bar in Calendar view and does not affect the way Calendar items are stored or displayed.

For the truly time-zone deficient, like myself, also consider an extra clock on your desk, set to the same time zone as the office.

10.  Have some kind of social connection– The hardest thing for me personally to tackle was the lack of social interaction.  Not that I was much of the “water cooler” kind of girl before I moved, but I get tired of only hearing about the problems and miss the fun stuff like baby showers and the latest gossip.  Fortunately I have a great group of co-workers (that are also friends!) that keep me “in the loop”!  Since they may also be the only people that read my blogs– THANKS GUYS!!!

Some good resources I found while researching this article

• Master the Art of Working Remotely
• How to Work Remotely, From Very Rural Locations
• Top 10 Remote Work Myths & Realities

I recently had the very great pleasure of participating in a project kick-off meeting with one of our educational clients.  We are about to begin building a Cascade-based Intranet for this customer and the kick-off included two days of meetings at the client’s location.  This kick-off was truly one of the best I’ve ever attended and I think it warrants a “how to” list, since they really did it just right…

1. Be prepared… The customer had met internally with all groups connected to the project before the meeting (in some cases, on numerous occasions) to establish the goals for the project.  I often provide a list of items to think about and review before a kick-off meeting, but this client went above and beyond by giving thought to the site design, content and functionality ahead of time.  In addition, we had a firm agenda and time-line to keep the meetings flowing and on schedule.
2. Provide documentation (electronic)– At the very least, give some thought to how you’d like the new web site organized and provide documentation as such.  For me, an outline format in Word works best, but PowerPoint slides, Excel lists, etc. work too.  Extra bonus points go to this client for creativity — a couple of the  participants in this meeting are very “visual” thinkers, so instead of just drawing on a white board, they took the time to make really cool Visio diagrams for us which we could take back to the Beacon team and easily share.
3. Be open to new ideas– The client had a lengthy list of ideas, wants and needs, but was very open to our suggestions and thoughts.  Sometimes we got “No, it is really going to have to work this way,” but sometimes we got “Wow, we never thought about that direction!  Go for it!”  Very satisfying for all involved.
4. Have all decision-makers participate (at least marginally)– I know that executives and senior management are super busy, but there’s nothing more frustrating for all involved, than getting 80% of the development of a project completed (or, even worse, 99%!!), only to find out that the ultimate decision-maker had not been consulted and that much of the current direction must be scrapped.  That wastes our time and your budget!!
5. Include stakeholders of the project that are not necessarily decision-makers– We learn so much about the needs of the project from the people that will actually use the final product.  This client devoted at least half of the meeting time to introducing us to content owners and letting them describe, in their own words, what they would like to see the Intranet used for.  We got some surprising and unanticipated responses, which we did our best to include in the final product.
6. Make sure the technology is adequate– We’re setting up a web site, so at the very least, we need to have Internet access and a projector and sometimes a conference/speaker phone, if we’ll be connecting with other locations.  Ability to hook up my own laptop to the Internet and projector are nice too, but not critical (always keep a backup of your docs on a USB drive!!).  If your meeting facilities don’t provide this, please let me know in advance so I can bring them.
7. Remember that we are your partners– At every level, this client is professional, pleasant to work with and thoughtful.  I can tell you from personal and painful experience that this is not always the case.  We really want this project to work for your company, so let’s all put on our best behavior and make it a good experience (and bonus points for super yummy cookies!)… See other great tips along this train of thought at “How To Sell Yourself as a Client” and “Does Beacon really want to be your business Partner…“.  I absolutely love this quote from the latter of these articles– “It’s a Two-Way Street – Remember, though, that acting like a partner isn’t just a vendor’s responsibility. You must reciprocate. Beating your vendor into submission on price, for instance, may help you pull off a project and enhance your standing with the bean counters, but it’s no way to forge a long-term partnership. What goes around comes around.”
8. If at all possible, meet face-to-face– I attend plenty of project kick-off meetings via conference call and web meeting, but nothing beats sitting down face-to-face with a customer and discussing their project needs.
9. Provide a quiet and isolated meeting place and devote the meeting time to the project work– Though of course we all took periodic breaks to check our email, send a quick text or fight a minor fire, 90% of the meeting time was spent discussing the project.  Nothing more frustrating than sitting in an empty room while the client takes care of matters more important than the project at hand.
10. Get personal– Similar to item #7, but more action than attitude-related.  This client took us on a campus tour and then out to dinner, making for a very long day for them indeed!  However, during the tour and meal, we had the opportunity to learn more about the university, and the client, in a less structured and informal environment.  The better we can get to know the company and the people involved, hopefully the better we can meet your needs.

Good luck with your next project kick-off meeting.  Hope it is as great as ours was!