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03/03/2009 | Filed under Magazine > Latest issue / Magazine > Back issues

.net issue 187 is on sale now! Win more clients with the perfect pitch – how to beat your rivals to the hottest design contracts

EDITORIAL INTRO FOR ISSUE 187

“It’s never been more important to concentrate on the goals of your business”

Having spoken to a number of web designers and agencies over the last few months, there’s one thing that they all agree will be vital in 2009: focus.

This isn’t to say that we’ve all been stumbling round in a state of befuddlement thus far — not all of us, anyway. It’s merely an appreciation of why it’s never been more important to concentrate on the goals of your business.

With that in mind, in this issue we’ve chosen to highlight how you can increase your chances of success when it comes to pitching for work. Our main feature, written by Brighton-based agency Clearleft, is packed with advice on the best ways to win contracts, and should provide valuable insight for anyone faced with the task of presenting to a prospective client. Getting your pitch right is vital, and I hope this feature can go some way to making 2009 a rewarding and fruitful year for you!

.net issue 187 is on sale now!

Making the perfect pitch There’s never been a better time to refine your approach to winning new clients. Richard Rutter, co-founder of Clearleft examines the pitch process from start to finish and reveals how you can beat rivals and win every contract	clearleft.com If you want to get ahead in web design and development, you need to make intelligent use of the emerging social networks, says Suw Charman-Anderson
Calling time on IE6 Craig Grannell asks designers and developers if it’s finally time to take IE6 behind the shed and shoot it	Interview with Yahoo’s Christian Heilmann Christian Heilmann, international developer evangelist at Yahoo, travels the world on a mission to make the web a better place. Talking to Oliver Lindberg, he calls for more sharing and says innovation isn’t just down to rock star developers
Create time-sensitive sites Stuart Loxton, web developer at design agency Strawberrysoup, explains how to create subtle CSS changes to your site based on time of day	Fast-loading pages in Dreamweaver Reduce the time it takes users to get to your web pages by harnessing the power of PNGs. Adam Bankin gives a step-by-step guide to achieving speedier loading times