I upgraded to a “Standing Desk” today:
After learning in college about the downside of having a job where you sit on your butt all day long, I proceeded to do just that. So, today I created a hybrid standing desk by putting one of my spare desks on top of my main office desk.
It is pretty stable, so it should work, as long as I don’t get too frustrated and start pounding downwards with extra force.
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Last Winter, I found that I was spending long days in my office and getting an average amount of work done. At the end of each day, I would look at my hours and see that I put in the time, yet feel as though I didn’t accomplish much. This lead me to putting in more hours, and yet – still – getting an average amount of work done.
I was frustrated with my “lack of productivity,” and the waning hours in the day. So, I tried Cherry Picking.
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I found $20 in the post office today. It was sitting in the middle of the floor. A woman with a purse had just walked by. I picked it up and went up to her. “Is this yours?” I asked. She replied, “No. Sorry.”
Another woman had just entered the line. She had a purse, and also recently walked by. “I’m sorry, I think you dropped this,” I said to her. “No. I don’t think so. Thanks, though.”
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There’s been a lot of buzz around Corvallis lately about local business reviews. Yelp has been a platform of choice for many of these reviews, as it provides a chance for patrons to put a quantitative star-value on their experience(s) and couple it with a qualitative comment, for browsers to pay heed. This pairing has worked quite well, and Yelp is getting much-deserved attention as a purveyor of the democratic process.
However, not all businesses are equal (or even good), and this sometimes leads to a less-than-optimal review. The social-media Luddite shirks in fear that the negative reviews are open for all to see. His business may actually be influenced if someone sees it, and the less-discussed competition is likely to reap the rewards. In a fearful last-ditch effort, he calls out the reviewer as being biased and too influential, and he must repent by removing the review. Resigned, the reviewer admits that maybe he had a singular bad experience, and is willing to remove his bad review. After all, he doesn’t want to harm anyone’s business. He just thought that he finally found a place where he could be honest. With a sigh of relief, the Luddite settles back in his seat, content in the silence on the social media front. “I would rather have nothing said than something bad said,” he erroneously thinks.
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Most websites are designed to direct you towards a “call to action.” This may be a call to purchase, contact, subscribe, tweet, or download. “Click here” and your wildest fantasies will come true…
This is a very important component to brick and mortar businesses on the Web that need to quantitatively measure the number of contacts, revenue generated from each contact, and cost to acquire these contacts. For a digital downloads site, it’s an even cleaner and more direct route. Set up an Google Adwords campaign, measure the number of exposures, cost-per-click, clickthroughs, and the number of downloads or purchases. It’s a direct funnel with little wavering and clearly defined holes*.
The analytics funnel can be measured simply with numbers in, numbers out, and diversions along the way. 0-100% optimized.
What about blogs, online books in HTML, magazines, or art exhibitions and galleries? An argument can be made that for these types of sites, the goal is to get the user to engage more than it is to get the user to click, buy, or contact. If you are using a photo montage, slideshow, or writing thought-provoking blog articles, is your goal to ship the user away via a click, or to get her engaged, talking about your story, and believing in your vision? A “call to engage” is what this site needs. Design to lead the user into your story, captivate her with your photos, and rid the landscape of peripheral “calls to action.”
Most news sites follow a three or four-column approach to their website. This can be understood, as the news business model is tied around advertising. But, wouldn’t it be nice if you read your articles with big type, restful whitespace, and engaging pictures? Many follow the recipe, but forget that the signal gets lost for the noise when your reading one amongst four columns, and the highest contrasting elements on the page are the banner ads, trying to get you to click away and buy a cell phone.
The next time you redesign, consider if it would be most appropriate to have numerous and loud calls to action, or provoking and relaxing calls to engage.
*The attrition and loss of users along the way due to checkout abandonment, site bounces, or click-aways.
“Stop and Smell the Roses”
…is a famous saying to people who are constantly rushing from here to there, without any enjoyment of the process, no time to reflect on life. In recent history, this statement had validity. People were goal-driven, results-oriented, and didn’t pay attention to anything but the bottom line.
Then came the “Social Web.”
The Social Web gets us all to “Smell the Roses” much more than we used to. We may not acknowledge it, given our history and value for results. But, it’s permeated our culture. And, it may be to our detriment.
Take Facebook, for example. Last Month, Facebook exceeded Google in the number of U.S. visits, and (I’m sure) has a significant advantage in time spent on site.
What behaviors are the average Facebook user engaging in? Social interaction, gaming, browsing photographs, notes, comments, etc. From a user-experience perspective, this is largely “browsing.” There is a frequent lack of purpose, motivation, or driver behind each click. There is a limited number of conversions, and searching yields only the next page of browsing.
One of the more frequent complaints I hear about social media is one of spending too much time and getting nothing accomplished. With a user-interface and design ecosystem engineered to reward browsing, it’s apparent that social media can be both addictive and quantitatively unrewarding.
The results may speak otherwise. I have on frequent occasion received a lead or project due to social media interaction. However, the deal was closed outside the social media arena, and measuring the resources of input in getting that job was difficult.
Facebook, Twitter, and blogs all have value. But, there have been many days where I’ve been socially engaged and feel extremely connected, but accomplish nothing towards my goals. I urge you to be conscientious of your behaviors and the results of those behaviors. Awareness is the first step.
Yesterday, I met with a client who had a drop in contact requests for his product over the last month. We took a look at the website analytics, compared conversions, and indeed his numbers were down from the same month last year. We could assume economic shifts, weather changes, or voodoo curses may have caused this event. But, in order to get the real nitty gritty, I pulled out my toolbox of useful metric resources.
Here are a few resources we used to see whether the change is “just him”, the industry, or some type of Black Swan:
I look at top keywords, and how they are performing in Google Trends compared with last year/month. Google Insights, is another useful resource, where you can drill-down by geographic information, and compare terms.
Take a look at the search results. Google sometimes shifts its algorithm, and you may lose the top spot to a site like Mahalo, or another site with new, updated and current information. Google’s Webmasters Tools gives a decent indication, but nothing beats a signed-out, cache-cleared search.
Take a look at your own analytics. Check your traffic sources, search keywords, and look for significant changes. If you go up to change the date, you will be offered the option of increasing the timeline. I will sometimes look across multiple years to see the growth and trend for a particular site.
Use a site like Compete to compare your site with other competitors’ sites. Alexa does some CI as well.
One place where I like to keep a pulse of the market is inside my Google Adwords account. If you use the keyword research tool under the tab “Opportunities,” you can get a measure for the average CPC bid, global/local searches, and approximately how much it is to enter the advertising market – which in turn will tell you how much your competitors are currently spending on advertising in the same industry. This tool provides a ton of information, I highly suggest keeping a good eye on it.
Rework by 37signals is the best business book I have read this year, and one of my top 5 books that I would recommend to any new startup or entrepreneur.
Each chapter is four pages or fewer. Like the business models they describe, each milestone (chapter) leads to momentum, and the desire to keep up the pace. Rework is a very quick read, and can easily be completed in a day.
It’s simple, it’s encouraging, and it’s realistic. Go buy it now. Don’t hesitate.
Here’s a one-minute video that they used for marketing the book.
One week ago, I programmed a simple PHP/MySQL application that logs my daily tasks. After finishing something (writing a blog post, programming a stylesheet, designing a mockup, etc.) I add it to the log, and it tracks the total time, whether it is billable, the related project, the expense for me, and whether or not it requires travel. I now have three weeks of tasks logged in to the work log, and it is a great way to look at how I have been spending my time during these initial few weeks of starting-up, as well as how I’ve been spending and making money.
I know there are tools out there that do this for you, probably have a slick “Web 2.0″ interface, and only cost $15.99/month to use. What tools do you find useful for task/time tracking, whether you’re independent or not?
What do you think about using GMail, Google Documents, and other Google products for business?
Generally, Google’s uptime is reliable. However, a friend of mine recently said, “I’ve been hearing about Google going down a lot lately. I don’t know if I trust my client data with them.” The instances of note were probably just on this surface of his memory, and not reflective of Google’s business as a whole (certainly not down as often as Twitter). But, his thinking was along the right/secure lines – I don’t want to trust anyone else with my clients’ info, other than myself and my trusted hardware/software.
Your servers go down and you lose access to all of your business data for a period of time. What do your clients think? You failed. You can try and explain it to them, but they don’t care.
What about Google? How familiar is Google? Isn’t there a relationship that most Web users have with Google, that you can foster? There is more understanding when a mutual friend is suffering downtime. However, if it’s your buddy that spilled red wine on my carpet – you brought him, you’re responsible.
How much more real understanding can you get with your clients than to say, “Hey, even Google was down.”
