Planning your website may seem like an obvious notion, but can often be overlooked or downplayed. The eagerness to start the website design or just the fact the the site has to be ready to launch at the end of the month are two common reasons why. Not properly setting out a plan for your site, will, of course, lead to numerous headaches later down the line — ones that could lead to you missing your deadline, or having to totally redesign that pretty concept you made after building half of it out.

If your looking for a company and they talk about how cool a site can be and what fancy features it can have, then beware; that is all well and good , but ask about their methodology, and when you can expect to see a first draft of the menu architecture. If they keep showing you pretty designs run away.

There is a greater push these days for a company that will do it all.

Many advertising agencies and marketing companies routinely outsource some or all of the services they provide. The primary reason could be because they usually have a focus in one or two areas, like IT, website development, search engine marketing (SEM), or video production. Anything extra gets pushed out of house.

Seems to make sense on the surface. Staffing an agency or company with all of the people needed to provide every marketing or advertising services,  the equipment needed, software, programs, facilities, and so on can seem like a lot for one business to take on. But in today’s digital world, it’s not so smart.

Add to that, the fact that the customer is getting smarter and savvier. They are catching onto the fact that certain services are not only outsourced to other companies, but, more than likely, overseas to India or China, and they don’t like it. More awareness on the economy means people are more concerned about keeping business within the U.S., and then there’s the communication gap. There are things that get lost in translation, especially when it comes to content development, and one of the most widely outsourced items search engine optimization.

DDA has known for a long time how important it is to offer everything in one place, which is why that has been our structure since the beginning. There is a greater need for multi-media services like web embedded video, websites that have a shopping cart, tracking mechanisms, and online quizzes, and CD-ROMs that integrate embedded links and other features.

I get a lot of calls from people whose first question is, “How many services do you offer; Is it all done in-house?” It’s becoming more important and more prevalent, and like everything else DDA anticipated the need and was ready and waiting.

Well, I got towed last night. Waking up and having to go to work only to walk outside and find your car gone is just about one of the worst feelings in the world. After a cab ride to southwest Philadelphia and a good hour wait until the tow office opened up, I finally managed to make it into work.

It always seems like there are little problems like these in life that are designed to get in the way.  I prefer to view them as challenges to be overcome. For instance, the money I had to spend on my tow fee is balanced by the fact that I worked at my part-time side job this past weekend. Lucky for me, but even if I hadn’t had that little extra I’m sure I would have figured something out.

Challenges are present in every aspect of life. As a gamer, I am very familiar with challenge as a method of entertainment. Overcoming a high score, beating a difficult boss, or finding all the secret items in a level are all examples of gamer challenges that are encountered frequently, for fun, by gamers like me. Work is another source of challenge. At DDA, my co-workers and I run into a huge variety of them every day, and in this fast-paced business they all need to be met head-on. Meeting a particularly tight copywriting deadline can be a headache-inducing nightmare, but DDA’s team of professional writers get it done on a daily basis. Creating ten different website designs as options for our clients, only to scrap nine of them in favor of their favorite may sound frustrating, but our talented graphic designers and webmasters are glad for the learning experience. And while meticulously hand-animating a mask in a video production project only to have the program crash and lose all your work may be reason enough to throw your computer through a wall, our expert VP crew can take it and say “At least for the next time, I know how to do it.”

At DDA, we meet our challenges face-to-face, and I believe it’s important that you should too. Whether in life, for fun, or at work - confronting and overcoming challenges is the key to a successful, productive life or business.