Spicy Web Designer Interview with Taylor Romero from LiquidFire LLC

Taylor Romero runs Liquid Fire LLC a web design firm based in Denver, Colorado. He originally started about 10 years ago and even though he was a teenager when he started. In 2002, he started officially designing websites and formed LiquidFire LLC in 2007. His business has been progressing ever since with a focus on providing excellent service and developing his company’s secret weapon, ContactTRACS.

1. When did you first start to design websites?

I started when I was 14, so (mental math) about 10 years ago. Of course it wasn’t what it is today, but cut me some slack; I was just learning who girls were.

2. Has your education helped you in your Career as a web designer?

Um, that’s questionable. I say that because most my time is spent running a small business rather than anything I learned in school (I was a computer major). The one thing I had never anticipated was how much work went into running a company and how it would take away from my time doing anything else… but, luckily I’ve been able to bring some peeps in to help me out.

But back to the question, yes and no. I got my degree in Computer Information Systems. I consider myself more a programmer then a designer because I can always outsource to good designers, it’s tough to gauge how good a programmer is until they screw you (which has happened on more than one occasion). But, truthfully, I enjoy programming more anyway. I was able to test out of some of my classes, but the ones I couldn’t, like my Oracle classes, helped me understand the theories behind the practices I had been using for years. I was lucky that I could just turn in actual work projects for homework which meant no homework!!!

Since I did the whole thing backwards (found my career before college) it really helped learning the theories. But, had I not used the concepts in the real world before hand, I would have undoubtedly found many aspects of it useless (simply for the fact that I wouldn’t have actually used them in practice).

Would I go to college if I had to do it all over again… yeah, probably.

Point of story: Be cool, stay in school.

3. Where are you currently based? And how many people are in your organization?

We are based in Denver Colorado right now. Well, 2 out of 3 of us are. I grew up in few different places and ended up in San Diego for a few years. That is where I decided to start growing up a bit. I hired the best damn programmer in the world named Dan who has helped me punch out more projects efficiently, cost effectively, and more reliably then I ever thought.

Then, about 6-8 months later I brought in Rebecca who has been our client liaison and project manager ever since. She has her own gig called The New Pink (http://thenewpinkmarketing.com). Together, the three of us have been… ouch, I just cut my finger trying to replace the ribbons in a client’s cd/dvd label printer. Dang, I cut it good, ah man; I’m going to get blood on my keyboard. On well, I’ve got sacrifice, bruised and bloody, our founding fathers would have wanted me to press forward.

Ok, where was I? Oh yeah, the 3 of us, Rebecca, Dan, and myself are getting so good that now I guarantee we can beat any larger design shop’s price, quality, and customer support. In fact, I throw the challenge out there, if you’re someone looking for a website, send us the proposal you currently have and we’ll meet it point for point but for considerably less… and if we can’t, don’t go with us.

4. I was reading through some of your blog posts and noticed that you make mention web analytics a number of times? Do you think that this is something that web designers should take note of and have a basic understanding of?

Analytics aren’t so much the job of the creator as it is the job of the implementation team. When I design, or my designers design, or someone who designs… designs, and sends me the PSD, it’s my responsibility to ensure it does what it’s supposed to do. Of course there will be situations where the designer will need to make revisions because what they laid out is impossible to work with, but more often than not we are able to take any design and make it SEO friendly.

But now a rant: Any firm that puts form over function is a firm that is ensuring your… um… unsuccessful… Not necessarily failure, but show me a site that does millions in revenue that is flashy and fancy.

Let’s take a look at the top websites in the US according to Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=US&ts_mode=country&lang=none

You can see that starting from the top, each site gets progressively more complex, but NONE use Flash as an integral part of the design. I’m not saying that simple design (minus of course MySpace) resulted in their success, I’m saying that in order to capitalize on that success they needed designs that worked, not designs that made you sit 30 seconds for a loading screen.

That kind of blatant, unintelligent, misguided approach is what firms who care more about a profit then the success of their clients produce. It’s bad for everyone and does nothing but force me to spend 15 minutes explaining to new clients that I can make that crap if they want to, but that I recommend they look at a website that they actually spent money at as inspiration.

Ok, I’m done ranting, sorry about that =)

5. How do you usually price out web design projects?

We usually price out on a per project basis. No client wants Option A or Option B. They want this from Option A, that from Option B. I enjoy listening and brainstorming ideas and together coming up with a perfect solution to help them grow.

Fortunately, we are able to come in at very competitive rates because of our secret weapon: http://contacttracs.com

This system allows us to make badass websites with no back-end work. I’ve been building it for what feels like forever, but it’s nearly done (all that really remains is the training videos I’m currently about half done with).

Using this system it’s very easy for me and the gang to get in and build kick ass systems.

In fact, had I had ContactTRACS when I started my company, I’d be twice the size I am now, easily. But, that’s another story. =)

6. How do you usually find your clients?

All our clients are word of mouth right now, I have never really done anything marketing wise but soon I would like to have the budget to do some advertising. But, who knows when that will come to pass. But, turns out, produce good work and people talk about you to their friends and coworkers, so for now we’ll stick with great work and word-of-mouth advertising.

7. Does your company hire a lot of freelance web designers or do you try to keep design in-house.

I prefer to outsource designs because it gives us more time to focus on rock-solid code. Here is a note for designers looking for some work:

Never ever send me a resume. I don’t care who you worked for, what education you have, or the plethora of applications you think you know. I only care about the work you produce, so send me a ##@% portfolio…. sorry, that came out like a bit of a rant. So far only 2 rants this session, not bad considering these are like the only two things I have to rant about… I guess besides politics & religion =)

8. How long have you been in business?

2002 is when I officially started LiquidFire. 2007 is when I became an LLC.