Sweedish film director Ingmar Bergman died two years ago. He was one of my favorite film directors, and I wrote this in my old blog the next day (although I’ve updated it for 2009).

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The world of movies lost a great one, as Ingmar Bergman died yesterday.

Bergman has a special place in my heart, as he was the director that showed me how film can really be art. The quality of his work is stunning, to say the least.

I don’t want to sound like a film snob - I like prettymuch all types of movies. I’m a fan of arthouse stuff, and I also like a summer popcorn movie as much as the next guy. But there is a profound difference in  “Transformers 2” (and similar) and a film like Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”.

With the summer popcorn movie (or any mainstream film), you may remember a line of witty dialog, maybe a character or two, or perhaps an action scene. You leave the theater and say “wow, that was really good”. And then you go on. Which is great - I love being entertained by a fun movie. I just bought Watchmen on BluRay the other day - it’s just a seriously ”fun” movie.

But watching something like The Seventh Seal (or The Virgin Spring, or Wild Strawberries, to name two other Bergman classics) is different. I believe films like this actually enrich your life and make you a more complete person. You come out not remembering one particular “cool” scene (although Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in The Seventh Seal is a pretty famous scene), but with a wonderful feeling… you know you saw something profound and great, but you can’t quite put your finger on what makes it so great. I’ve never seen the real Mona Lisa, but I’m told the effect is similar. 

If anyone hasn’t seen a Bergman film (or any “great” cinema for that matter) and wants to explore a little, let me give you one piece of advice that will help: carve yourself out some time to do such. You can’t watch a movie like The Seventh Seal with interruptions from kids or life or whatnot. You just can’t. You need to sit still for two hours in the dark and really watch it. And don’t expect to be “entertained” by it like you would be with some action movie, crime story, or relationship drama.

Instead, watch it and absorb it.

You’ll come away a better person. Trust me.

You’d be surprised how many times I’m asked to write for a new or semi-new website, and the website owner really doesn’t have a solid grasp on what he or she wants the website to do.

Oh, they know what they want the end result to be (sell products, contact for services, etc.) But they don’t know the really important factors in getting to that point.

A website is like a new business - before going into business, you need to know who your customers are going to be, where they are coming from, etc. With that in mind, here are four questions every website owner should be able to clearly answer: 

1)  Who will be coming to your site? 

I got to thinking about perceived value today.

What got me thinking was a news story about some gas station where they were selling gas for 28 cents a gallon (or something like that) for some promotion. And people lined up for blocks, a several hour wait, to get some.

Are they morons?

Well, maybe that’s a little strong, but they are definitely blinded by perceived value.

Ok, let’s say the normal price is $2.78. So this little promotion saves you $2.50 a gallon. Figure that most cars have, at best, a 20 gallon tank (and that’s only on the larger cars and trucks - most vehicles seem to have a 10-12 gallon tank.)

A little math says that if you were bone dry with a 20-gallon tank, you saved yourself fifty bucks. But it’s unlikely anyone was bone dry, so, factoring in the smaller tanks, say the average person got ten gallons. So they saved 25 bucks. They waited SEVERAL HOURS to save 25 bucks.

I was right the first time - they are morons.

But that’s what “perceived value” does to people. It clouds their judgment. And compels them to spend their non-working hours in a line of cars for what amounts to barely above minimum wage. Because they perceive gas at 28 cents a gallon as an incredible value. 

It’s handy to know the perceived value of your products and services. It might shock you too, because in many cases, it’s probably lower than you think it is. Sadly, we all don’t sell gasoline.

For example, for my own business (writing) the perceived value is seen as somewhat low by beginning businesspeople. That’s because we can all write on a basic level. So a business person just starting out comes to me as a time-saver more than anything, and is shocked that I charge “professional” rates.

They only see the value in my service with experience.  I have no problem getting my rate from professional businesspeople. But the layperson says “you’re only writing”, which is akin to saying  “you’re only connecting wires” to an electrician.

But fair or not, this is how things are perceived by some. Instead of fighting this, I embrace it, and work extra hard on my website to show a real value for my services. And I think I do a pretty good job.

So what’s your value to others? Are you really honest about how others perceive you?

 Trust me, this is how your company really feels…

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Someone asked me about this today, so I thought I’d pass it on:

When you are writing numbers, generally one thru ten are spelled out. The rest aren’t. So we spell “seven”, but not 17.

I break this rule often, though (it’s not really a rule, but more of a handshake agreement.) Why do I break it? Because “we handle any size job, from 3 pages to 300″ catches the eye better than “we handle any size job, from three pages to 300″ (although the second one actually looks more professional when reading - so it’s really about what you are after - scan-ability, or a professional read.)

Anyway, just thought I’d share that.