How a typical day dealing with Magento inquiries went horribly well…

Careful what you wish for… this is what you often hear, right? Well, thanks to our inbound marketing efforts, we are getting many inquiries daily with potential clients asking for some Magento work ranging from small fixes and modifications on their existing sites to full projects from scratch. To be very clear, we find ourselves in a situation where many of our fellow developers would like to be in. It is then the question of filtering out these inquiries, delving deeper into project requirements details and, hopefully, landing a project or two.

However, working with a large number of incoming inquiries can at times lead to reducing oneself to a typewriter, and getting a feeling like you’re stuck in an infinite loop, much like this one (anyone here still remembers the good ol’ Basic?)

10 PRINT: “Thank you for you inquiry. We can definitely help you with your project. Could you please share some more details together with your expected timeframe so we can prepare a more informed estimate for our work?”
20 GOTO 10

And while this is all part of the job, sometimes a thing happens like it did today when you simply have to stop for a while and enjoy the moment.

An inquiry came in saying: “I would like to build a Magento shop selling all Vuvuzelas from the 2010 World Cup to aliens so that those lovely sounds inspire their hearts for a while.” In case you don’t know what Vuvuzelas are, you’re probably not that big on football/soccer. If you want to learn more, just listen to this…

Then all hell broke loose – the team members started brainstorming on the best ways of setting up intergalactic shipments, whether there’s an UPS API available that would easily handle the shipping rates for “lower 48″ group of stars of the Ursa Major constellation, and how the payment gateway of the Ferengi bank on Uranus doesn’t support “authorize before capture” option. It was really a great way to finish off Friday on a high note.

So, if you’re looking to expand your business overstars, we’ve already started preparing…