Good Business: Empower Your Staff

The ability for individual teams and even individual team members within your organization to make decisions is important.

I had a good example of this recently. I had purchased a new camera from NewEgg to replace one that was stolen on my trip. The unusual set of circumstances was that I was still out of country at the time, and thus had the camera shipped to a friend in the US who would be meeting up with us later on in Central America. She would bring the camera along. So far so good.

Unfortunately after the camera arrived at her house and she inspected the package, she found that the box did not have the battery charger as it should. Her plane was leaving in 96 hours, 72 of which were a National Holiday!

How would NewEgg handle the situation?

I was able to go to the NewEgg site and chat with a rep online. They confirmed that the package should have had a charger. They would overnight the replacement charger, but because I was calling after hours Friday and with the coming 3 day weekend the soonest it could possibly arrive would be hours after my friend's flight left. Solution A: No good.

At this point I figured that it was simply going to be impossible get a charger in time, and I would have to wait until I returned to the US to use my new camera. Afterall, that is the type of response most company's customer service desks have taught us to expect. "Sorry, there is nothing we can do" is too often the answer.

Much to my surprise that was not the case at NewEgg. Not at all. The rep told me what he "could do". All I would have to do is have my friend purchase a charger from a local retailer, and NewEgg would reimburse me the cost. That was a workable solution!

Obviously NewEgg had provided the customer reps certain limits within which they could work to make things right with their customers. Good job NewEgg! Next time I go to make an electronics purchase you can be sure I will think of NewEgg first.

But the real questions are:

How would your employees have been able to handle such a situation? Would they have had the ability and company support to make everything alright?

Biz On The Web: What can you learn from a search engine?

If you think search engines are only useful for finding a website... I have to disagree. Search engines are research tools which can yield many diverse and interesting bits of information.

For example, I am located in Odessa, TX. What can we learn about Odessa, TX that might be of interest to a business local to the area?

Here is some data from the search engines:

The most popular search term that included "odessa texas" was "ford odessa texas" with an average monthly volume of 21,581 searches.

I doubt anyone who has visited this part of the country would be surprised to see that American make cars beat out the foreign (closest foreign is Toyota with 6,692 searches).

It is interesting that the majority of searches geographically targeted to the area are for vehicles. In fact, car searches completely dominate the search list.

So we could deduce that a large percentage of the Internet using population of Odessa have an active interest in purchasing a vehicle when they head to Google. Depending on your industry, that might be useful information.

For example, although an average of over 20,000 searches are performed by people interested in Ford vehicles in the Odessa area, neither Rogers Ford nor Sewell Ford (the local dealerships) are listed on the first page of Google results. Nor are they taking advantege of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on the search engines. I wonder if they are even aware of the opportunity they are missing out on?

After vehicle searches, Real Estate is the next "hot search" market - although it was unexpected to see that "office chair odessa texas" (2,513 searches) had more than double the searches than "real estate odessa texas" (1,159 searches). Apparently there is a huge seating shortage in town! If you are in the office furniture business this could offer a great business opportunity.

If you are a Realtor it might be of interest to know that while the above mentioned search term "real estate odessa texas" had 1,159 search, only 263 searches were performed for "odessa texas realtor". Might this indicate a marketing need to better educate your audience about the usefulness of a Realtor?

Without a doubt, search engines can be a powerful tool to research your local market.

Technorati Tags: business on the web, business owners, midland, odessa, search engine research, small business

Blogging 101: I messed up.

I have had a blog for about 6 months, but just this month I have put some real effort into getting things rolling.

Unfortunately in the excitement I totally messed up.

A number of ideas for articles came to mind, and so I wrote. I wrote and I published. The error? In doing so I was wrapped up in the writing and forgot my audience.

Forgetting your audience is a huge mistake.

So at the end of a month I looked back over my posts and realized, “Who would want to subscribe to this?”

While hopefully I have been able to produce some material that will be of interest to readers, it failed to address a single audience. My current or potential business clients would have no interest in the more technical articles. Fellow designers and developers would have little interest in the articles aimed at educating business owners about websites.

I made a mistake. Fortunately when working with the digital medium, it is not terribly difficult to fix mistakes - especially if caught early on.

Thus, what I have done is taken my single group of posts and split them into two separate blogs.

All articles which I think will be useful to businesses interested in creating, updating, expanding or improving their website will be kept at this blog, "It's All In The Details".

All articles which are aimed at the web designer & developer community have been moved to the "Just In Time" blog.

I hope this separation will make it easier for readers to quickly find and subscribe to the stream of information most interesting to them.
The lesson of which I was reminded? Whatever it is you are doing, always stop and think about your audience.

Your Website: Series Intro

The majority of my clients tend to be small to medium sized businesses. In these types of organizations the internal personnel assigned to the website project may have little to no previous experience with a business website.

This can present a number of challenges.

For the internal personnel it can be difficult to accurately assess which service provider will best meet their needs and provide a good value.

For the web designer it can be difficult to accurately estimate costs or meet expectations when the client isn't sure what they want.

Educated purchasing & marketing decisions require at least some measure of understanding. I always prefer an educated customer. In fact I would say that is the best possible client.

Whether you currently have a website or are considering one in the future, the subsequent articles in this series will help address some issues that a small business should consider.

Don't just have a website. Know your website. Put your website to work.

Technorati Tags: small business, your website, web design

Diversified Influences: MoCo Loco

As mentioned in my previous post "Diversify your knowledge investments", I try to expose myself to influences outside of the web design and development sphere.

One of those influences that I regularly enjoy in my RSS reader is Moco Loco. Although some may translate that as Spanish for "crazy booger", it is actually a site dedicated to modern contemporary design & architecture. The feed is photo heavy and always manages to have an inspirational example of creative design. If you are looking for ideas for color, shape or texture give MoCo Loco a peek.

Technorati Tags: blog review, design, feeds i read, inspiration, rss

The self-fulfilling website prophecy of doom!

If you are a business owner, how do you view your website?

Is it an important, even vital, part of your business or is it an after-thought... perhaps even a necessary annoyance? In many ways your perception of your website will greatly influence it's results.

For example, if you start your project with the idea that your website is something you have to have (because everyone else does) but of no real practical value, how are you going to treat that website? You are going to treat is as something of no practical value. That means no time or budget to keep it up-to-date, to promote it, or to make it have any practical value to yourself or your audience. You've just created your very own self-fulfilling prophecy. You already decided it wasn't going to be a success, how could it ever become more than what you thought it was?

Successful websites have enthusiastic and active support from within the company.

Technorati Tags: small business, business owners, web design

The Secret of Search Engine Marketing

Chris Brown, author of the Branding & Marketing blog and President of Marketing Resources & Results, recently published a post entitled "What is your Search Engine Marketing and Linking Strategy?" She expertly summed up her approach with the words "Learn what to do. Do it." Right to the point, I like that.

Additionally Chris asked that others, including myself (thanks for the link!), respond with the approach we take to Search Engine Marketing and Linking for our blogs and websites.

Before I get into the simple process I am taking for my blog, I would like to take a moment to address a few erroneous ideas that I often come across.

Unfortunately I find many of my clients' initial introduction to the idea of Search Engine Marketing is provided through SPAM. Perhaps this SPAM will even be what motivates their call:

"Hey Justin, I just got an email saying for $800/month I can get guaranteed top ten placement in all the search engines, what do you think?"

Thus the first step I normally take for clients interested in Search Engine Marketing for their business is to provide a little education on the topic.

Guaranteed results

You can only "guarantee" that over which you have complete control.

In the world of Search Engine Marketing that means I can guarantee clients that I will do my best. I can guarantee that I will work hard. I could even guarantee that if I can't accomplish a specific goal I will refund their money.

However, it is impossible for me to guarantee that Google will do XYZ because I have no direct control over Google or any other search engines. Furthermore, exact search algorithms are not disclosed, and search engines are at liberty to change them whenever they so please.

Gaming the system

Search engines are powered by computers. Computers aren't too bright. Because of this some clever person always finds a way to trick the search engines into thinking a site is more relevant than it really is.

While this may provide quick and impressive results, it is not a good long term strategy. Taking this road means you make the search engines your enemies, who according to their terms of use are free to remove your site completely from their records if they so choose. If that wasn't enough, the search engines are constantly discovering these tricks and adjusting their algorithms so that they no longer work. Do you really want to start a never ending tug of war with the search engines? I don't.

Don't fight the search engine

Make the search engine your friend instead of making it an enemy which you must outsmart and outmaneuver.

So what do the search engines want? What makes search engines happy? The companies behind the search engines want to provide the most relevant results possible for any given user's search term, and are spending millions of dollars to do so. The search engines have brilliant men and women working hard to hone their software to provide the best results. Search engines want quality, relevant content.

So in the end, what is the first step to successful Search Engine Marketing? Give the search engines what they want! Develop quality content that is relevant to your desired search phrases.

My Approach

So what is the process I will be taking with this blog?

1. Publish content that will be of interest to my audience


2. Be helpful: Include links to suggested sites & software


3. Be a good neighbor: Inspired by another? Credit & link them


4. Be confident: If a "competitor" has a good post, go ahead and link them

No secret tricks. Just give the search engines what they want.

Of course, actually doing that means work. It requires an investment of time and energy. Decide to take ownership of the web branch of your business. This doesn't mean that you cannot partner with an expert company, but take an active part in the development of the web branch of your business.

Technorati Tags: blogging, branding & marketing, chris brown, search engine marketing

Diversify your knowledge investments

Blogs can be an excellent source of practical & timely information. However, as a web craftsman I tend to lean towards blogs that are directly related to what I do.

Glancing over the list of blogs in my preferred reader the majority of those blogs focus on topics such as web programming, usability, user interface design, css, javascript... ok, and Dilbert too.

While those are excellent sources of information, I have found it useful to diversify into other relevant topics.

For example, I recently stumbled upon the excellent Branding & Marketing blog of Chris Brown. The posts I have read so far do not specifically mention "the web", but all have much application for my personal business and techniques that I can implement for my clients.

So the lesson I have learned? Don't focus all of my attention on the web perspective. By diversifying my knowledge investment into complementary fields I can better round out my personal business skills and increase the value I can provide to my clients.

Technorati Tags: blog review, chris brown, branding & marketing

Keeping Track of To-Do's

Maybe I'm an exception in the world of web workers, but I generally prefer a desktop application over a web-based one.

However, one online web app that I have found to be useful and well put together is the GTD-friendly to-do application Vitalist. The basic service is free, has a pleasant interface and completely meets my needs.

If you are looking for an on-line to-do application, be sure to check Vitalist out.

Technorati Tags: gtd, getting things done, productivity, online applications

Trim Your RSS Feeds: Value vs Distraction

I have found one of the best ways to increase productivity is to judiciously trim my RSS feeds.

Personally I went through my RSS feeds and determined which ones regularly provided meaningful, relevant content to help me in my profession and which ones generally led me down a path of distraction (i.e. Digg Tech).

I'm not saying I removed all distractions, as it would be hard to part with my daily Dilbert feed, but by reducing the least useful RSS feeds (especially those that were also high volume) I now have more time to focus on a select group of feeds that deserve in-depth attention because of the real value they provide.

So next time you go to add a new RSS feed to your favorite reader, ask yourself: What is the Value vs Distraction ratio of this feed?

Technorati Tags: productivity, rss