Did you take a shower today? If you want to present yourself to the world well, same thing applies to your business as well. It has to look
good. Deborah Laux talks about the importance of logo in your business. Deborah is an identity consultant and graphic designer in Los Angeles, CA.
I had an opportunity
to look at Deborah’s work. She did some very good work. Some of it is in her website. Check it out. I recommend her!
Chaitanya’s article, A Beginner’s Guide to Landing Page Optimization, recently got published in AMEX Open Forum, and we at p2w2 are pretty excited about it š The aim of the article, as the title suggests, is to help the reader
gain a better understanding of Landing Pages. Chaitanya hasĀ written this article, based onĀ his own research, as well as the experience derived from creating p2w2’s landing pages.
As Chaitanya puts it in his article,Ā a website’s home page is not necessarily your website’s landing page. So it is indeed necessary to devote some time and effort towards creating a winning landing page.Ā Here’s a brief outline of what the article covers.
1. Effective usage ofĀ pictures on your landing page
2. Importance of having a Call-To-Action or Sign Up button
3. Relative importance of factors that drive customer conversion(based on a webcast from searchmarketingnow.com)
4. Significance of user surveys and testing
Do read the article, and let us know if it benefits you! š
Handling your projects just got a whole lot easier! The file management feature on p2w2 lets you save your work files for a project at one secure location so you and your client always have access to them. This makes working through P2W2 much more efficient and faster.
These files are visible only to parties involved in the project, the client and the professional. Confidentiality is assured!
Each project has a dedicated file space set aside for it, so all the files for a project are in one location without cluttering your private workspace.
For starters, all the relevant documents you need for your p2w2 project are placed in one secure location. They will be shared only between the professional and the client, so confidentiality is maintained. You can revise your documents too and store the different versions in this file section. If you think that you might forget which files contain what, we’ve also provided you with the means to append small descriptions and notes alongside each file so that it is convenient for reference.
Maintaining a log of all such activity and revisions makes the work more accountable and efficient. You can compare different versions of a file. You no longer need to hunt through your system for the files and in the event of a system crash; you can still find all documents stored online. This makes you a more reliable person to work with since you can work from almost anywhere while still maintaining your travel schedule.
Only your latest version for any file is visible, thus keeping your workspace clutter-free. Also, for security and privacy reasons, if you delete a file, all versions of the file are deleted. So, in case you want to revert to an older version and discard the rest of the versions, save it under a different file name first.
You can manage large projects easily since different file formats can be uploaded. For example, if you are designing a web-page, then you can upload images, media, content files and HTML/CSS or other related files with descriptions of
each to guide the project development.
You can mark a file as a ādeliverableā, i.e. one which can be used for the project. Once all the revisions are made for a file, you can indicate that itās a deliverable by choosing the option while uploading it.
Lets start with getting familiarized with the files section in your projects:
1. Start by first logging into P2W2.
2. Open your projects page and click on the name of any one of your projects.
3. You will see a small menu with items like, ‘Project Home page’, ‘Files’, ‘To-Do,’ etc. present. Click on ‘Files’.
4. You will see an āUploadā button, and two sections titled: ‘Deliverables’ and ‘Other Files’
5. Click on the āUploadā button.
6. A small window has opened on the page, asking you to browse for the file on your system with a few other fields namely: ‘description’ (for adding small notes about a file), ‘milestone'(in case you want to link files to a milestone date) and a checkbox which lets you upload the file as a deliverable one as required.
7. After you select the file, add a short description of your choice so that you know what the file contains. Select a milestone as per a decided date if applicable
8. This is what you should see before uploading.
9. Now, after you click on the upload button, your file will be visible under the ‘Other Files’ Section or the ‘Deliverables’ Section depending on your selection.
Click on the link next to your file name which says ‘upload a new version’ and a small window will open again like before. This time you can see the current version of the file displayed. Clicking on the files will let you view them in the browser.
p2w2 lets you store up to 5 versions for a file on our servers.
To delete all versions of your file, simply click on the trash can icon next to the file. In case you need to maintain just one final version, upload it on a new file name and delete all versions of the old one.
Try this feature out and let us know what more you would like to see in it to help you use it better. We hope you enjoy using the Files feature and the other collaboration tools we have on p2w2.
About the author: Amit Mullerpattan is VP (Product) at www.p2w2.com which helps small businesses outsource services like writing, software, graphic design, virtual assistance, business consulting and research. Amit blogs at p2w2 blog (RSS) and tweets at www.twitter.com/Chaitanya.
Image credits (top): M Wichary
p2w2 now has a new office. Till now, we have been working out of my residential apartment. Below are pictures of the old office we have been working out of.
That is Amit (grey shirt) and I (red shirt) working from there. The discussion in the picture was of course made up. š Ravikiran (picture below) should have been in these old office pictures but for the injury he sustained.
I would really like to thank Sahiti, my wife, for all the support she gave when we worked out of her home.Ā We invaded her kitchen and privacy but she was patient through out. She went out of her way and cooked for us and cleaned the place and innumerable times supplied refreshments, so we could focus on the work. Thank you!
I would also like to thank Vidya Sagar who has helped us in a number of ways including designing our logo, designing and printing business cards etc. He is a great advertisements guy and knows how to network! He is now the most punctual guy around. He took all these pictures! Thank you!
Thanks are due to a number of others who have supported us. Pratibha K, Vikas Arya, Koteswara Rao, Krishna Rao (my father), Jayabharathi Devi (my mother), RK Kalluri (Playgroundonline), Devan Rajashekar, Rohit Kundaji, Vinay Kumar, Will Swayne, Emil Pindur, Raghavendra Prabhu, Anita Campbell, Jason D’mello and Sandeep Shroff who have all supported us in different forms.
We opened our office on 2nd December, 2008. We did a puja (a prayer) and occupied the premises.
Below is me (Chaitanya) and Sahiti preparing to start the puja.
Puja arrangements
Amit, Akhada (Amit’s wife), Chaitanya, and Sahiti busy in the puja. The little girl is Samiksha, Amit’s daughter.
Ravi Kiran, p2w2’s Product Lead. Ravi was injured recently. He got his leg fractured and still attended the puja and has been working out of home. Thanks Ravi! It has been great working with you.
This is little Samikha. She was uncontrollable during the puja.Ā š
Below are pictures of our friends from Investment Yogi and New Energy Finance who share the office with us. That is Mamtha and Deepika.
That’s Madhu, Kiran, Deepika (almost hidden) and Shravan all from Investment Yogi.
View of the office from outside
View of the office from inside
I wish I could just walk across and talk to my team, it would make everything faster!
If you have outsourced work and have had this thought, you are not alone. The spoken word does seem to convey much more in shorter time. Voice inflections, pauses and the enthusiasm you can convey when you speak may not be conveyed through a long document.
One of the coolest features we have on p2w2 was the voice recording widget. You can āspeak toā your potential business partners through p2w2.
The voice feature is available for you on p2w2 at all the right places. You can find it in recording project description, providing feedback, discussing issues and also for sending routine voice messages.
The controls are fairly simple. You have the Record, Stop, Pause and Play buttons. And
you have on-screen controls to edit what you recorded! The bars to the right indicate how audible your voice is to the control.
Worried that you might be speaking and your computer might not be hearing you? Well, we alert you if your microphone is not picking up an audible signal for more than 10 seconds.
Same controls, different purpose! You can quickly leave a voice feedback, and if needed attach files and also type in text to make everything absolutely clear! Open the document you are providing feedback on, and talk into the microphone as you skim through your document/PPT etc. No more swapping repeatedly between applications, or breaking your chain of thoughts to type comments in.
Emails are passĆ©! You can ātalkā to your p2w2 partner using the voice message feature.
Why not just pick up the phone you ask? Well, it might be 2 AM at where your business partner is!
Soon after your are done sending the message, the person you sent this message to can now play it back.
Did that pesky marketer call when you were in middle of a lengthy project description? Or did you get an important call you just had to take?
No need to start all over again, of course. You can select the part you want to remove from your recording, right click and delete.
Finished speaking a whole paragraph and realized you missed out something? No problem! Click on the wave form and you can insert what you missed out in middle of your existing recording! Isnāt that just cool?
Need to pause a while to recoup your thoughts? If you did not notice them already, the Pause buttons lets you take a break from recording to gather your thoughts, have a glass of water, open up that 6 pack ā whatever helps you get moving again.
A tip: pausing for a shot while every few sentences helps you use these editing features easily. Not to mention you will be easier to follow for the person listening to the recording later!
Finally, some of us just like to talk than type. Overall, speaking your thoughts out into a recording tool is much faster and productive than attempting to type it all out. A document that would have taken you over an hour to type, format and attach could all be perhaps condensed into a half hour voice recording.
Thatās all from us at p2w2 for now. If you have any cool features to suggest, write to me at Amit DOT Mullerpattan AT p2w2 DOT com.
About the author: Amit Mullerpattan is VP (Product) at www.p2w2.com, an online marketplace for services like writing, business consulting, research, software, online tutoring etc. He is responsible for the user experience with the p2w2 product and services.
