Web-Savvy Mom’s Design Firm Takes Wing From Home

SignOnSanDiego.com:

In designing a Web page for her online baby clothing boutique four years ago, Oceanside resident Staci Brillhart unwittingly tapped into a market niche of moms trying to run businesses from home.

Requests from friends and acquaintances who wanted her to tinker with the Web sites for their own startup companies came streaming in, until Brillhart decided to forgo her baby clothing operation to concentrate on Web design fulltime.

Her company, Quirky Bird, now runs with a two-month waiting list and will celebrate its first anniversary this month.

Four years after teaching herself basic programming, the Houston-born mother of two employs a remote programmer and customer service representative while completing the creative consulting and design on her own.

She has 87 completed Web sites and is working on 23 projects with a nine-client waiting list.

Customers pay a $775 retainer to get on the waiting list, paying the balance of Brillhart’s $3,875 fee at the project’s completion. During that waiting time, Brillhart assigns “homework,” asking clients to start defining their ideal site.

“I tell them to brainstorm about the aesthetic they’d like to see,” she said. “Find sites they like, sites they don’t like. Observe moods and feelings of different sites. Do they like something edgy or urban? Or something modern, or minimal, or sweet?”

After Brillhart reviews their notes, she gets to work on the basic elements of a company Web site: a logo, a template for headers and footers, and the technical mechanisms and visual appearance of the content area, where product images are displayed.

She also works with clients to develop the five printable items that come with her design package; things like business cards, fliers, Web banners, gift certificates, letterheads or stationery. A project’s start-to-finish timeline is usually around two months, Brillhart said, and clients walk away with the copyright.