Website designers

A surprizing number of world-class websites are now being powered by WordPress.   WordPress, is a free, PHP/MySQL based open source software solution is a beautifully elegant content management system designed primarily for bloggers but is becoming a phenomenal tool for news rooms and other web content managers that need to frequently put out information without technical support, assistance, or skills.

Consider these world-class WordPress implementations:

• politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
• allthingsd.com
• gretawire.foxnews.com
• thepage.time.com
• offtherack.peoplestylewatch.com
• autoshows.ford.com

The key to a succesful WordPress implementation is quality custom design and development of the WordPress template.  At inQbation, we pride ourselves on elegant WordPress implementations and WordPress template customization.  If you are looking for a custom WordPress template design or modification, give us a call.

The Pareto Principle, coined by Joseph Juran 40 almost years after Pareto’s observation of the 80-20 rule, applies to almost every facet of our lives. Pareto’s observation was that 20% of society owned 80% of the wealth. Juran used the 80/20 principle to imply that 80% of our quality control problems are caused by 20% of the components. One could argue that 80% of our customer service issues are generated by 20% of the customers.

The 80/20 principle should not be taken literally. The numbers could be 99/1, 95/5, 90/10, 85/15, or 60/40. The point is that there is an imbalance in the way things work and we need to focus on the things that matter if we are going to have better control or influence on our business, our lives, our problems, and our finances.

How the 80/20 rule is amplified by recessions and economic downturns

Have you ever heard of the saying, “the rich get richer?” This saying is often applied during recessions and depressions when “normal” people lose wealth while those with money gain wealth. The reason this happens is that people with money, particularly old money, tend to always have money. When the economy slides and prices fall, bargains become available. A normal family has to give up their home to foreclosure, which gives an investor a great opportunity to buy a nice home at a bargain price and then turn around and rent that home to the former owners. The same thing goes for businesses and other types of personal property.

How to apply the 80/20 rule to your advantage

There is also another saying that recessions are times when strong companies get stronger and weak companies get weaker, i.e., only the strong survive. The reason strong companies get stronger is because recessions are both reasons and opportunities to shed weight and unnecessary expenses. Smart companies apply the 80/20 principle to identify the 20% of their workforce that is doing 80% of the work. If a layoff has to occur, these are the ones to be kept while the remainder are let go.  If you are an employee, make sure you are in the top 20%.

During economic downturns, smart companies will look at the 20% of their clients who produce 80% of their revenue and ensure that they do everything it takes to serve these clients well because if they don’t and these clients leave then these companies will have difficulty surviving a recession.

In uncertain times, smart companies will look to see the 20% of the activities that produce 80% of their profit and ensure that they focus hard on these activities and do these activities extraordinarily well. If a company needs to shed unproductive business units, then applying the 80/20 rule is a good way to help them prioritize which units to keep and which units to shed.

Focus on your core business

So, as we head into uncertain times, it is important that we focus on our core competencies. We need to carefully and tightly carve out our niche and be extraordinarily good at what we do. We need to understand and be conscious that time is money and we need to be focusing exclusively on the absolute most important activities possible … the ones that will result in real change or improvement to our business functions.

If we can afford to outsource or pay somebody else to do tasks that are not worth doing then we should. Otherwise, we should consider if these tasks are really worth doing. Focus is the key, focus to improve on the 20% that affects the 80%.

I decided to break down and order cable TV service the other day.  Since I already have my internet service with Comcast, I went ahead and contacted Comcast to obtain the additional services.  Since I’m kind of a net guy, my first instinct was to use their live chat service from their website.  But, when I started the online chat, I noticed that I was something like number 40th in the queue.  After staring at the chat window for two minutes, it dropped down to number 39.  I knew this was going to take a while, maybe as long as 80 minutes based on my sampling of progress.

So, I decided to pick up the phone and exercise option number 2.  After calling in an navigating their voice activated menu tree and making half a dozen selections, I was talking to somebody on the phone.  Since I had kept the online chat window open, I noticed that I was still only number 38 in the online chat queue. 

But, after talking to the guy on the phone and trying to discern his words through his thick accent (he should probably visit one of our clients, Kelly Reiter from Reel English Coach, who is an Accent Reduction Coach),  I understood that the rate he wanted to offer me for cable TV was $59/month.  I told him that I’m looking at his website and I see that it is only $33/month. He said he couldn’t offer me that price.  “But why,” I asked, “I’m staring at the price on your website?”.  He told me to go to the website and sign up there.  So I did.

On my third attempt to buy from this company, I signed up online and within a couple minutes, without having to talk to anybody, without having to sit in a queue, I was able sign up for cable TV at significantly less than what the customer service rep had offered me (although in 6 months it automatically goes up to $59/month - if that’s not a bait and switch tactic then I don’t know what is).  Of course, by now, I am number 36 in that original queue.  But here is what is really interesting…

As soon as I completed my order, I automatically went into another online chat queue to confirm my order.  Within about 15 seconds I was chatting with somebody who had confirmed my entire order. 

The irony is that after initially trying to do this from the chat window, I ended up submitting my order online and ultimately talking to an operator via a chat window.  But, I was able to do it in 5 minutes while I was completely unsuccessful talking to a live person on the phone and I still had a 72 minute wait in my original chat window.

Depending on which approach you took, the customer service from Comcast could be rated as excellent, poor, or failing.  No wonder alternative online venues like www.ABC.com, www.CNN.com, and www.Amazon.com are making progress in the area of online entertainment.  If companies like Comcast continue to offer such inconsistent, and in some cases, horrible customer service, then it’s only a matter of time before they lose this entire segment of the market.

Typically, an Intranet is an internal communications vehicle for employees of a company.  However, Intranets are typically blocked by firewalls.  Often, they are not accessible from any where or any time, especially with hand-held PDAs like the iPhone.  However, during emergency situations like hurricanes, employers often need to get information out to employees fast.  The company internet website is quickly becoming the tool of choice to disseminate information rapidly to employees who may not have access to an internal, password-protected, firewalled company intranet portal.

The problem, however, is that unless you give employees advanced notice that they can find critical information on the company’s website, then they may not think of going there.  Moreover, a company website is typically geared towards its clients, not its employees.  So, there is usually no logical or intuitive navigational link for employees to click on to know where to go in the case of an emergency.

For this reason, it is probably best to think ahead, plan ahead, let employees know that emergency information will be posted online and let them know where to find it.  Otherwise, your hastidely posted information may be like the tree that falls in the forest … if there is nobody to hear it fall, does it still make a sound?

If you are interested in seeing how your website compares in rankings to your competitors, there are a couple of online third-party tools that can give you a general observation.  Often, I will refer to two third party websites,  www.Alexa.com and www.Compete.com.

Since both major political party conventions are over, I thought I would run online website traffic comparisons between Barack Obama and John McCain just to see what kind of interest people have in each candidate’s websites.

As you can see from  www.Compete.com, the two major remaining candidates were virually neck and neck between August and November 2007.  But, around December 2007, Barack Obama’s campaign caught fire … maybe it was the Oprah influence.  But, as you can see, John McCain’s website performance for August 2008 match that of Barack Obama’s website performance for July 2008.  Moreover, John McCain’s traffic report is up 3,000% for the year compared to Barack Obama’s 1,250% for the year.

So, at least for now, and maybe that is due to John McCain’s selection of Palin, John McCain is catching up with Barack Obama.

The chart below demonstrates similar results from  www.Alexa.com.

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You know, I love a good race.  As in football games, its much more exciting when it comes down to the last minute.

Last year, when I decided to discontinue my cable TV subscription and stop going to Blockbuster, I noticed a dramatic improvement in my productivity while working from home.  But, from time to time, it’s nice to get plugged into pop culture and see video other than what you get on YouTube.

So, I started exploring mainstream video on demand (VOD) services.  The first service I stumbledupon was ABC.com.  Nice thing about ABC is that I could watch full episodes of Lost.  Although I had to endure the commercials, it was convenient, addicting, and saved me both time and money by not having to rent them from Blockbuster.  I also wasted plenty of time watching ridiculous game shows on ABC.com.

Then, during both the Democratic and Republican conventions, I wanted to listen to and watch the speeches.  So, I went to CNN.com and found satisfaction there with full-time, 100% live coverage and the ability to go back and watch coverage that I had missed.

When it came to the convenience of getting and watching full-length movies, I found Netflix to be a refreshing alternative to Blockbuster.  One of the neatest things about going online to Netflix is that you can list and prioritize your favorite movies, move things around in your queue, find out exactly when to expect your next movie, and so on.  It was fun.

Well, now Amazon.com has jumped into the forray.  Amazon offers not only the same type of cable TV episodes that you would expect to find on venues like ABC but also streaming rentals and purchases of videos that you’d expect to see on Netflix.  At $1.99 for TV episodes, $3.99 for movie rentals, and $10-$15 for movie purchases, Amazon provides relatively competitive pricing.  However, at this moment, the digital quality of the videos are not high definition.  So, apples to apples, you are not getting the same quality as if you had purchased a DVD out of the box.  If you are only watching movies from an iPhone or small laptop then it’s no big deal.  But, if you plan to stream the videos and display on your 42″ HD plasma, you may be a bit disappointed.

Regardless, it is interesting to watch the convergence of online entertainment through video on demand and the shakeup of the media industry whereby traditional broadcasters are being supplanted by internet pioneers.

The most recent issue of Inc. Magazine, September 2008, Inc. featured the Inc. 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies.  The winners are clustered around distinct major metropolitan areas within the United States and the statistics are very interesting.

For example, the states with the most companies per million residents rank:

1. Utah
2. Massachusetts
3. Virginia
4. Georgia

The cities with the most companies rank:

1. Washington, D.C.
2. New York
3. Atlanta
4. Chicago

Finally, the cities with the most companies per million residents rank:

1. Provo
2. Austin
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Raleigh

What is interesting to me are a number of things.  Namely, the cities that I would have expected to rank high on the Inc. 500 would have been Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are typically considered the entrepreneurial proving ground or heartbeat of U.S. business.

In addition, East Coast regions are dominating the Inc. 500 landscape.

Finally, some of the cities and regions that rank the highest have relatively lower costs of living, e.g., Austin, Raleigh, and Georgia.  Virginia is particularly fascinating in that it boasts some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country yet the cost of living is not necessarily the highest.  Certainly, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francico have higher costs of living that the Washington, DC metropolitan area.  To me, this translates into an optimal earnings to expense ratio vis-à-vis cost of living.

Recently, Google launched a new web browser, which presumably aims to compete with Microsoft IE 8, Firefox, and Safari. 

At first glance, Google Chrome is a joy to use.  It is fast and easy to download and install and once installed, browsing seems even faster.  It’s interface is nice and clean, just like Google search.   Google added user-friendly features include blocking of pop-up ads, ability to surf the web anonymously … defying the persistent cookies that some advertising networks drop, and a limited toolbar, which allows more effective use of screen real estate.

However, it does have some problems as well.  As usual, Google quickly threw out a half-baked Beta version which resulted in the following message when I tried to go to MiGente:

In it’s defense, Google Chrome intends well, but it just falls short.  Another shortcoming is that even though it suppresses some  banner advertisements, the advertiser still gets charged for the impression.  For a company that earns its living on ad revenue, I can’t believe they let than one slide.

Another nice feature of the Google Chrome interface is its visual history of your browsing habits:

This may or may not be good, depending on who happens to use your computer or looks over your shoulder as you try to Google something.  Another interesting thing is that now that Google Chrome can watch almost every keystroke you make as you surf the web, it starts learning your browsing habits.  So, when you Google something, it takes this past browsing history into account as it determines which sites to present to you in response to your  Google inquiry.

For now, I would recommend that people just stick to Mozilla’s Firefox.  It seems to have the best and most reliable rendition and translation of web standard HTML and CSS.

Managing content on your website has been an increasingly challenging problem ever since web sites have been around.  But, as website owners strive to keep their website current and use their website as a primary means of delivering fresh, relevant content to their visitors, content management becomes a mission critical issue.

The primary issue is that web owners need the ability to quickly and efficiently add, change, or maintain content on their website without having to have technical HTML skills or relying on a designated web designer or developer.

A web owner has the following choices:

1. Dictate content management changes to a web developer
2. Learn HTML and make the changes yourself
3. Buy a “user-friendly” 3rd party CMS like Adobe Contribute
4. Build and integrate an organic CMS into your website
5. Avoid making frequent changes to your website

We believe that options 1, 2, and 5 and not the best options.

inQbation strives to build content management systems into their websites as an organic component or feature of the website.  We believe that frequently updated web content needs to be managed by the owner of the website using simple, secure, and easy-to-use tools.  Moreover, these CMS tools must have WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing interfaces and should not require any technical HTML skills.

We believe that simple blogging software, which is free, open source software makes the most sense and cents.  You can easily integrate WordPress or Blogger into your website.  You host this software on your server or seamlessly integrate them from a hosted solution.  You encaspulate only frequently updated content to be managed exclusively the the CMS.

The wonderful aspect to using blog software like WordPress and Blogger to manage your content is that you can post entries to your website via standard desktop applications like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office Outlook, and even your standard PDA or cell phone.

At inQbation, we have deployed WordPress to manage only our blog.  However, if you look at ReelEnglishCoach.com, for example, the entire website is managed by WordPress.  Both ways work fine and are cost effective content management solutions.

Recently, I started work on an online marketing campaign for one of my clients and the first thing we did was keyword consultation.  I asked my clients to randomly sample some of his potential website visitors or perhaps his ideal website visitors and ask them, “What words would you Google if you were trying to find me but did not know about me?”

About a week later, my client wrote back saying that he had checked his server logs and he listed his top 5 keyword phrases.

“That’s not what I had asked for,” I told him.  All that tells me is how existing clients are finding them.  This tells me nothing.  What I want to know is how can we reach clients who don’t know who you are?  You can’t get that information from your traffic logs.  You have to reach out to your prospective clients and ask them directly, with open ended questions.  Otherwise, you are going to produce biased results.

Certainly, it would have been easy for me to take his original list and exploit it.  I could have easily focused on these keywords and demonstrated through third party analytics that I was making progress.  But, if I were him, I would be more interested in the bottom line.  Who cares how many people come for a keyword that you are already indexed for?  What you should care about is conversion rate, specifically increasing that conversion rate.  You should focus on bringing new website visitors.

Common SEO trap

Another very common and tempting thing to do is to guess, using your own words and inside knowledge as to what website visitors might use to find you.  Don’t do it.  I don’t care what words you use to describe yourself or your industry.  You are an expert.  Experts use different words than novices.  The only words I care about are the words that your prospective website visitors might use to Google you.

So, pick up the phone and call people. Or, next time the phone rings, ask them, “What words would you Google if you were trying to find me but did not know about me?“