Make it Better

Mrs. Bobbie Viral

Jonathan Towell — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:18:50 GMT

A while back I posted a video made to advertise Sunset's website to it's members. That video is now going viral. It hasn't reached massive numbers or anything, but people are sharing it on blogs and other sites.

See for yourself: Neatorama, The Huffington Post, Unterekless Thoughts, The Findbuzz, Christ Wire, Hackaday, The DW, Michael Reuter

Mahalo even has a profile for Mrs. Bobbie.

I put the video on YouTube over a month ago. On Friday, my wif e posted about Mrs. Bobbie on Neatorama's Upcoming Blog. From there the video was voted up until it made Neatorama's homepage on Saturday. Before Saturday it had been seen about 100 times according to YouTube's counter. By the end of the weekend it had been seen close to 4,000 times.

Yesterday, the video was featured on Attack of the Show. At the same time, other blogs started picking up on it and posting it. As of this writing, the video has been seen 22,000 times.

Sunset's site traffic is up about 500% from normal. This website has also seen quite a bit of traffic growth over normal.

Those numbers aren't anything compared to many other web videos. If you look at YouTube's rising videos, most are well over 100k views. Still, it's fun to see the video being shared and people getting a laugh. Way to go Mrs. Bobbie!

Ethical Business

Jonathan Towell — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:48:10 GMT

With all the financial doom and gloom caused by shady dealings, many people wonder if everyone in the business world is crooked.

I'm learning a lot from what's going on. The biggest lesson is that scandal is no way to run a successful enterprise. After having recently spoken with several outstanding Lubbock business owners, I've been given the advice to do things right and treat customers with respect and honesty.

I like that advice so I think I'll follow it.

Inspiration: Guy Kawasaki and Solomon

White Elephant Hat

Jonathan Towell — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:51:55 GMT

Behold my prize at the latest white elephant gift exchange thingy...

Abby loved it.

So much, in fact, she thought she'd taste it.

Yes, I stole this from someone else.

Sales Advice: Ask Questions

Jonathan Towell — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:28:43 GMT

Nothing conveys interest more than questions.

When you're on a date, do you enjoy the date more when the other person talks only about himself/herself? Or, when they ask you questions about your life, work, opinions, etc.?

When you're selling, ask about their business. How did you get started? What are your strong points? What challenges do you face? How did you come to be successful? Who are your competitors? Why are you better? What do you look for when you hire? Where is your business going?

Questions have two effects. First, when answered, questions give you tons of useful information. Second, they build trust by conveying interest.

By the way, questions have to be authentic. If it isn't authentic, it is patronizing, so don't ask.

The real question is, are you curious about and interested in the people with whom you do business? If not, maybe this isn't the business for you.

Mrs. Bobbie Explains Sunset's Website

Jonathan Towell — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:43:02 GMT

My video with Mrs. Bobbie...

What If vs. What When

Jonathan Towell — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:14:45 GMT

Big differences between the two.

"What if" can be anything. What if an earthquake strikes the Texas panhandle? What if a user forgets his password, then forgets what email he used at registration, then forgets his own name? What then?

The problem with what if is that it kills progress. What if is a laundry list of excuses for not pressing on and making things happen. What if is the secret nuke for people who like to sit and be crusty.

"What when" plans for the inevitable. What when a user forgets a password? What when I lock my keys inside the car. These things are going to occur, so go ahead and plan for them.

Economy Woes

Jonathan Towell — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:04:50 GMT

Why worry?

Despite all the gloom and doom surrounding the economy, I'm optimistic about our l'il business.

We provide a valuable service. We're good at what we do and we work hard at doing it. Who knows? It might be that small businesses will turn more to the web in order to cut costs and get efficient. When they do, we'll be here to help them get things done right.

Against the Grain

Jonathan Towell — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:22:42 GMT

Next time nobody listens...

It's easy to think you're wrong, or worse, nuts when everyone believes different. Here's a guy who called foul on the bull market years in advance.

Did you hear the other "experts" literally laughing at him? One said "don't be so pessimistic." Bookmark that video for the next time your killer idea gets stomped.

Source

Fast, Good, Cheap

Jonathan Towell — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:59:41 GMT

Wrestling with pricing.

This article got me thinking more about pricing.

I wonder what would happen if we asked our client to pick one of these three choices for their project?

Fast + Good

Good + Cheap

Fast + Cheap

Of course, everyone wants all three. We even want all three for our clients. I suppose the trick is in defining fast, good, and cheap. Maybe by redefining those terms, we can easily fit all three into a project.

Effort

Jonathan Towell — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:36:49 GMT

Why so little effort?

Effort is the one thing that we have control over. We can't control the economy, clients, vendors, or the price of gas.

What would things look like if I gave just 10% more effort?

Inspiration here.

Link Roundup

Jonathan Towell — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:00:19 GMT

Link Roundup

World's first satellite navigation.

"The Brokers with Hands on their Faces Blog" - Title says it all.

I'm putting this shirt on my Christmas list.

The power of massive amounts of data.

Sharpen the Saw

Jonathan Towell — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:34:55 GMT

Learning is important

Since we started we've been running behind schedule. This was mostly because of poor project management though at some points we have had an overwhelming volume of work.

However, we've now wrapped up most of our big critical projects. We have a few sites that need some polish before launch, a perpetual project, and a few odds and ends maintenance things we're doing. There are a couple of possible new sites "contracts" on the table. So I predict a slight downturn in volume of billable work hours coming.

Now, the first thing we need to do is go get some new clients. But, that isn't the point of this post.

Perpetual learning is critical to those who wants to be the best at what they do. During a business downturn, learning should be on overdrive.

Colby is taking some time to improve a Google Calendars plugin for Ruby on Rails that we use on several of our sites. He's learning more about plugin architecture and working with third party APIs.

Sunday, I read a small book on RESTful application development with Ruby on Rails. I'm practicing what I learned in the book by writing a small web application using what I learned. Perhaps said application will become a future revenue stream. Or, it might just be a fun pet project for learning.

Of course, it is important to take time to learn even when you're busy. My point is that you should be doubly proactive when there is less work.

(Title comes from habit 7 in Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)

SEO Findings

Jonathan Towell — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:56:02 GMT

Some things I've learned about search engine optimization

1. Search engines don't release the details of their ranking algorithms to the public.

2. Search engine rankings can be gamed but not for long.

3. If you're not in the top 10, you're invisible for that particular search term.

4. If your website throws errors (404, etc.) when search spiders crawl it, those spiders will not index problem pages. (We use error notification to let us know when our sites throw errors. You should too.)

5. If you change the address of a webpage, use a redirect (301) to indicate the new address. Otherwise, search engines won't know where the page went, and your site might produce errors the next time it gets crawled.

6. Build a sitemap. It's easy, and it helps search engines understand your site.

7. Use Google Webmaster tools to get a better idea of what search engines are seeing when they look at your site. It's also easy and free.

8. Keeping #1 in mind, the two items that most heavily influence search results are content relevance and external links. Search engines survive by providing their customers with the best results possible. They do this by knowing which sites offer the most relevant content for specific searches. They also let other websites "vote" by linking to other websites.

9. Remember #2. Adding random links to your site in exchange for other sites linking to you does not necessarily help your rank. Links also have to be relevant. For example, if a taxidermy site were to link to our site, it wouldn't necessarily affect our page rank. What do taxidermists know about web development?

10. Metatags don't help or hinder search ranking. Think about it. What do metatags add that helps with content relevancy? Metatags are just a way for people to try to game the system which, as we've already established, doesn't work.

11. Google currently owns 62% market share for search. Optimize for Google.

12. After you purchase a domain name, you will receive junk mail offering to submit your domain to search engines for $X per month. Said junk mail is a scam. Tear it up and throw it away.

Our Top Secret Business Plan

Jonathan Towell — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:08:02 GMT

I'd like to ...

... have a few blow away customers that think we're great, not a ton of satisfied customers that think we're mediocre.

Texas Roadhouse

Jonathan Towell — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 03:54:34 GMT

Great food, not so great website.

Lori and I love to split a steak from Texas Roadhouse. Unfortunately we can't afford to do so very often, but that's another gripe.

Tonight I wanted to call ahead to reserve a table so I went to the Texas Roadhouse website to find the number to call.

Surprisingly, I was hit with two web design blunders.

1. Splash page

I don't know how the splash page ever made it mainstream. It serves no purpose besides giving the user one more step to go through to get to what they really want. Worst about Texas Roadhouse's splash screen was the fact that it took time to load, and once it did load, all it did was show you a neon logo with a bug zapper sound (as if bug zapping is what I want to think of when I go to your restaraunt).

2. Automatic Audio

Never ever hit your site visitors with automatic audio. Never. When you put audio that automatically starts playing on your website you are making the erroneous assumption that the visitor does not have his speakers turned up too loud, is not already playing music, is not at work, or does not have a sleeping baby in the next room. Besides being just plain annoying to most everyone, you're really going to turn off any visitor that fits any of the above scenarios. So just don't do it, mkay?

PS: The steak was good, and so was the service.