It’s that time when we all tend to do some self-evaluation and consider what we want to accomplish in the coming year. It’s very common to make resolutions for personal growth. I think it’s important to set goals or resolutions for your business and parts of your business too! The following resolutions play off of a list of some of the most common resolutions people are making for 2009 but will benefit your business, website, and/or blog.

1. Lose weight.

Like many of us, our websites have gained a few pounds! It’s time to trim the fat. Steve Krug’s fantastic usability book Don’t Make Me Think devotes a chapter called “Omit Needless Words” to this subject. His third law of usability is:

“Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”

For many of us this goal may be a bit far-fetched, but Steve is trying to make a point. Many webpages are wordy for whatever reason. The Internet is a different place. People don’t read your content for the most part; they skim, looking for specific facts and information. Make it easy–lose some weight! We’re not really talking about blogs so much here, but bloggers should remember that short, actionable content is the most effective. It’s time to resolve that you’re going to cut down on the fluff.

2. Go back to school.

Are you learning? Your website will suffer if you’re not. Guy Kawasaki writes in Reality Check:

“Learning is a process, not an event. I thought learning would be over when I got my degree. It’s not true.”

Reading is one of the most effective ways to learn, and your website or blog can benefit by your reading related books and blogs. Don’t be afraid to take classes at your local community college to become more familiar with subjects you don’t understand either. I know many people who’ve gone back for one or two classes just so they can get better exposure and understanding on a subject. (It’s also a great place to network!) Resolve to read a book or take a class related to your website or blog.

3. Spend more time with family.

In business or on the Internet, your customers and readers are like your family. Are you spending time connecting with them? Are you using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to connect with your “family”? Seth Godin writes in Tribes about Laura Fitton, a young mom from Boston who connects with thousands of followers (13,613 as I write this). Laura has built an entire consulting business by connecting with people (her “family”). The technology, says Seth, shouldn’t be the focus.

“The essential lesson is that every day it gets easier to tighten the relationship you have with the people who choose to follow you.”

Resolve to use the tools of technology to connect with your customers and readers; your website or blog will benefit.

4. Try something new.

Some of us tend to think “trying something new” means skydiving or sailing around the world, but it doesn’t have to be that extreme. Your site can greatly benefit from you doing new things and keeping it fresh. The advent of great tools such as Google Website Optimizer makes it even easier for you to try new things and learn what’s working and what’s not working. Freddy Nager writes in his book Claw Your Way to the Top:

“Business as usual can get awfully dull. A touch of novelty is . . . outright sense-awakening.”

Nothing bugs me more when I visit the website of a company I’m considering doing business with and find that they have a “latest news” section but the most recent item is over a year old. Whether it’s changing the font size a small amount or using different colors, resolve to do something new and different with your site at least once a month.

5. Take a trip.

Get out of your office! Meet some people, and talk about your blog or website. Join a local club or organization. The contacts you’ll develop and things you’ll learn are invaluable. Olivier Blanchard points out that you shouldn’t just join a group to “be there” but rather to “be committed to building something.” Geno Church suggests that a major reason to join comes from being able to offer leadership, especially in a new or developing group. He goes on to say it should be about sharing knowledge and being authentic instead of just seeing it  as a

sales club. Amy Bomar says:

“Getting involved is the key to getting the most out of any association or group, so choose selectively!”

Trey Pennington says you should join a local chamber of commerce or club because you’ll form incredible connections with active people who are tuned in to similar interests. Jordana Megonigal agrees and adds that you “don’t join a Chamber to learn how to tap dance.” Whether it’s going to a tweetup at a local coffee shop or joining your local Jaycess to do charity work or forming a local Social Media Club, you and your website or blog will benefit. Resolve to take a trip outside your comfort zone.

6. Pay off your debts.

Financial debts aren’t the only ones to consider. In a New York Times article titled “The High Cost of Paying Off a ‘Sleep Debt,’” Lawrence Downes wrote:

“Not only does losing sleep sap your energy, darken your mood and impair your alertness, but it also invites other problems.”

Want to have a better website or blog in 2009? Better sleep habits are going to help. Don’t fight it out to stay up and finish a blog post; save the draft and come back when you’re well rested. Want to feel fresh and energetic? A great night’s sleep will do wonders! Resolve to stop racking up a sleep debt!

7. Get a better job.

If your website or blog isn’t working, consider doing something else. Don’t waste your time on a dead-end. Are you contributing to your field? Are you making a difference? The Internet is becoming a crowded space, but stick it out if you have unique ideas. If you’re trying to use shortcuts to make a quick buck on the Internet, you’re probably just going to end up funding someone else’s success story. If you can’t find a niche or take something to the next level, seek other outlets. You can even use Twitter to find a better job. And hopefully if you’re applying any of these tips, you’ll find that this tip isn’t necessary (or maybe you’ll find that you don’t need a “job” anymore). So, resolve to find a better job if you need it, or make your current job better.

Get started now!

• Remove fluff from your home page
• Register for a class or buy a book
• Comment on this blog, join twitter, and follow me
• Sign-up for Google Website Optimizer
• Join or help form a local Social Media Club
• Take a power nap (or if it’s late and you’re reading this, go to bed!)
• Find a better job

[Disclosure, I own all of these books. Amazon and oDesk links are affiliate links.]

This is a post from the Nullvariable Web Consulting Blog.

7 Resolutions for your Website or Blog

I love the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” ads, which are some of the few radio ads of any kind that I even bother listening to. They salute ordinary guys doing ordinary things that make life in America extraordinary. If you haven’t heard these ads yet, hop over to Budlight.com where you can listen to them or even download a widget for your website. (Adding a beer-ad widget to your website without getting paid for it is a little weird, but if that fizzes your brew, go for it.)

In the spirit of it all, I’d like to salute the unsung heroes of my industry: the sales guys.

I began my career in sales, so I appreciate the challenges these guys face. They always have to be friendly and knowledgeable, even when they’re exhausted from traveling endlessly or talking to big-time jerkazoids. They hear the word “no” more than a hyperactive 3-year-old in a toy store. They get maliciously stereotyped by Hollywood as annoying double-talking weasels — check out William H. Macy’s brilliant performance in Fargo, Stephen Tobolowsky’s hilarious insurance guy in Groundhog Day, or the entire cast of Glengarry Glen Ross. Yet many of them earn only commissions, and when the economy declines, they feel the brunt of it.

And without them, the Web as we currently know it wouldn’t exist.

The Venture Capitalist’s (VC’s) are treated as gods for funding the dreams of geeks. The geeks are lauded as geniuses for turning strings of code into enterprises and empires. The creative guys win awards for their flashy designs or their tell-all blogs. But it’s the sales guys — often called “business development managers” or “account executives” — who close the sponsorship deals and score the ads that keep these web startups in business.

For better or worse, most Web 2.0 companies are ad-supported. Most big blogs, search engines, mapping sites, social networks, video showcases, sports and news sites rely on sales guys to go out and find the ads that will keep them afloat once the VC money dries up. Yet how many sales or biz-dev execs ever get featured on the cover of Wired? Hell, how many even get mentioned on the inside pages? It’s truly unfair, considering that Wired itself is ad-supported.

The popular misconception is that it’s easy to do sales — all you gotta do is call someone up, pitch your idea and ask for money. If you think that’s the case, I dare you to try it. For most people, the first cold-calling experience will make them swear off sales for the rest of their lives.

I did alright in sales, but I’m happy to have left it far behind. I now, fortunately, have a promising young sales guy working for Nullvariable: Robert Roskam. He’s fresh out of college, but has already shown he’s got what it takes to become a business-development all-pro.

What makes a great sales guy? Here’s a handy list for you:

1. A Great Rolodex: I know, nobody uses Rolodexes anymore — 99.9% of us keep our contacts on LinkedIn or our cellphone address books — but you get the point. A great sales guy has a solid base of connections that he’s continuously building. And it’s not just the frenetic and empty “friending” that typifies web 2.0 social networks. A great sales guy really gets to know his contacts so that when he needs to contact them, they’ll happily take his call. This is where experience matters: it’s only logical that the longer a sales guy has been at it, and the larger the companies he’s worked for, then the bigger and more valuable his Rolodex will be.

2. Fearlessness: It takes massive huevos to call up a complete stranger during tough economic times and to ask for their money. Nine times out of ten, you won’t even be able to get through to the person you’re trying to call, or they hang up after ten seconds. That’s enough to demoralize even the brashest Harvard MBA. I don’t know any sales guys who enjoy cold calling, but the great ones view it as nothing more than a minor chore, like flossing their teeth or washing their laundry.

3. Self-Control: Sales guys get rejected, hung-up on and lied to every single day. They see commission-only deals that they worked long and hard to construct completely collapse because one of their non-sales colleagues (even their CEO) perpetrated a bonehead move, like forget a meeting or have broken links on the website. They’re competing viciously with other sales guys, sometimes in their own company, for the same accounts. They get deals stolen from under them because the competition makes an unethical or illegal offer, such as a kickback or something even more scandalous. And yet, sales guys can NEVER lose their composure, because they represent the company on the front lines. They have to party with their potential customers, but they NEVER lose control because they’re supposed to make sales, not headlines.

4. Instinct: If a sales guy is living on commission only, he doesn’t have time to meet with everyone. And if he’s supposed to bring in prospective clients for the company, he doesn’t want to piss off his boss by introducing her to a prospect who turns out not to have any money. So a sales guy has to “qualify” his leads — he needs to find out as much about them, their intent and their resources as possible, without being too pushy or probing. This calls for as much instinct and intuition as it does for investigation. The great sales guys have this “nose” for promising prospects; the not-so-great ones don’t.

5. Networking Skills: There’s a major business conference or networking event every single day in major cities across the U.S. Everyone in business is told to attend as many of these events as possible, not because you’ll learn something (most of the speeches are material you can get from a blog like, uh, this one), but because you never know who you’re going to meet. The average guy goes to an event, collects some business cards, then loses them. A great sales guy already has the prospect interested before he asks for his card. He also has follow-up meetings scheduled before he leaves the event.

6. Closing Ability: Anyone can get leads or make a pitch; it takes a pro to consistently close. This requires creativity and negotiating skills to put together a package that appeals to the prospect. The amateur relies on price only. The pro figures out how to meet the prospect’s other needs and how to present an offer that’s a “better value” than the competition’s lower priced offer. Not only does the great sales guy get the prospect to sign on the bottom line, he also inspires his new customer to help with prospecting and referrals. You know you’ve really made the sale when your customers become your evangelists.

7. Follow Up: A sale doesn’t end with the signing of contracts and the exchange of money for services. A great sales guy knows that it’s easier to generate more business from someone who’s already said “yes” than to hit the cold-calling trail again. So he regularly follows up with his customers to make sure their needs are being met and to apprise them of special offers “just for them.” Sales is a full-time gig.

So, three cheers to the great sales guys of the world whose genius is truly extraordinary, thanks not only for bringing Nullvariable business, but for keeping YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook and ESPN and all the other free services I use and love alive. You may be villains or chumps in the movies, but you’re heroes in my book.

Now stop reading this and get back to work.

This is a post from the Nullvariable Web Consulting Blog.

Here’s To Sales Guys — The Unsung Heroes Of Web 2.0

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don’t know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

– from Spinal Tap, the greatest rock-and-roll movie ever

Thanks to the above scene, eleven is my favorite number. It also represents the Spinal Tap-level thinking still perpetrated by too many webmasters here in 2008. Here are 11 of my biggest beefs. I put them in order of what you’re likely to encounter when you call up a certain website.

1. Works on I.E. Only: Having a website that works only on Internet Explorer is so 2003. That’s when I.E. had 95% market share. At the time, I thought it was a good thing, since developers had been putting up with AOL’s lousy browser for too long, and Netscape’s last gasp was truly awful. But since then, I.E.’s share of the marketplace has dropped to about 80% (this site’s visitors are about 80% Firefox) — and will probably drop even lower now that Microsoft no longer makes I.E. for the Mac, whose market share is growing. In addition, more PC users are switching to browsers like Firefox and Opera for various reasons (such as speed and protection against malware). Consequently, we developers need to take other browsers into consideration again — particularly if we’re targeting people who are likely Mac users (such as designers and students). Some webmasters have refused to diversify, and are still quoting that 95% figure. Keep up with the trends, comrades! Other webmasters have responded by coding their entire sites in Flash, which is generally browser agnostic, but Flash has its own set of problems — serious problems. And that leads me to my second beef…

2. Flash Intro Movies: Flash intro animations were cute — once upon a time. But these days, they’re just annoying. You have to sit and wait for them to load, then they’re moderately entertaining at best. It takes a lot of creativity to give a Flash intro animation a “wow” factor anymore. From a development point of view, they’re expensive to create, expensive to edit, and most people I know click that “skip intro” button anyway — particularly when they’re surfing at the office and don’t want all that Flash noise to attract the boss. The only sites that should have Flash intro animations are movie sites, whose purpose (and forte) is entertainment. Want to spice up your site? Put a movie on the homepage — not QuickTime (see next beef) — and hire a professional designer and a professional writer.

3. Plug-In Required: I hate having to download a plug-in to use a website. Flash — OK, that’s fairly common, and most experienced surfers will download it early in their web-browsing. (Why Flash doesn’t come pre-installed on all computers is beyond me. Must be an issue with those greedheads over at Adobe.) What bugs me is QuickTime, which is Apple’s video player. If your audience has to download a plug-in before they can watch your movie, it better be a never-before-released scene from The Dark Knight.

4. Illegibility: I mentioned hiring a professional designer, but you have to keep an eye on them, too. Many of them see words as a “design element” rather than conveyors of important information. Consequently, you’ll find lots of sites with blocks of text that look spiffy, but are impossible to read: the text is too small — you shouldn’t have to lean into your monitor to read something if you’re younger than 50 — or the color combination is absurd (black text on gray, or white text on yellow). A common color combo these days is white text on black — which is great for short blocks of large text, like headlines. But entire paragraphs of white on black is definite headache material. What’s wrong with black on white? Another beef I have is text that consists of an image, which search engines can’t read, and which requires a designer to update. I know reading is anathema to the digital generation, but let’s give words a fighting chance on our websites.

5. Bad Writing: Sometimes the words might as well be illegible — hence, my suggestion to hire a professional writer. Obviously, you want correct grammar and spelling, but good communication goes beyond that. Many companies have their marketing executives do the writing, forgetting that many of them are MBA’s and prone to sentences like, “X Corporation is a leading provider of seamless end-to-end solutions and value-added best practices for your enterprise-level mission-critical initiatives.” Don’t believe me? Check out this site on business communications, Fight The Bull — Why Business People Speak Like Idiots by some guys from Deloitte Consulting. Ironically, Deloitte’s website is a jargonized mess. I just found this beast on their homepage: “Innovations tend to follow two routes: assimilation into the status quo or dissipation due to the lack of a sustainable business case. But disruptive innovations such as retail clinics and medical tourism veer off the beaten path, with sticking power that has the potential to change the way services are sought and delivered.” Scary, huh?

6. No Explanations: Of course, illegibility assumes that there’s text on the homepage to begin with. Lots of websites just assume you know what they are and what they do when you first land on them. Many Web 2.0 sites, such as Plurk.com, ask you to “Sign Up Now” before even telling you what you’re signing up for! These sites bury their explanations in the “About Us” section. Not only is that detour annoying to the prospective user, it also means all that search-engine friendly text is on a sub-page. “About Us” sections should be used for the history of the company and bios of the management — put the company or product description on the homepage! As for repeat users who don’t need the description, use cookies to automatically reroute them to their dedicated pages.

7. Mandatory Registration: It amazes me how many sites expect me to go through the registration rigmarole right off the bat. How about letting me try you out first — or at least let me watch a demo movie? And how about giving me some perks for signing up, such as an entry into a raffle? One of my biggest beefs involves going through a laborious sign-up process to use a site, then realizing it’s nothing I ever want to come back to. A lot of smaller employment sites fall into that category. I want my test drive!

8. No Registration Instructions: This is a minor beef, but it’s unfortunately too common. Ever start registering for a site only to have your registration rejected because you didn’t pick a username or password in the right format? You know, “sorry, your password must include a capital letter, a number, a Greek phrase, and the initials of your first lover, provided that you’ve actually had a lover, otherwise just use zeroes.” I understand the need to make passwords more complex, but how about providing all the registration guidelines before I start registering?

9. Dead Links and Other Errors: One reason I want a test drive before divulging my personal info is that many sites have more flaws and problems than Chinese-made dog food. Nobody’s perfect, but it kills me when I’m on a site that wants me as a customer, but they can’t even bother to make sure that most their links are working. How can I trust them with my email address, not to mention my credit card info?

10. Impossible to Find Anything: Inaccurate site maps. Invisible contact info. Insane search engines. Regardless of the size of your site, smart architecture and simple navigation are utterly imperative — particularly since Google could deposit a user somewhere deep inside of it. How will they find their way out? I picture hordes of users wandering the innards of a site like survivors on The Poseidon Adventure, yelling, “Where’s the Contact page? Where’s the Contact page?” And please don’t cheap out on search functions, particularly if your site contains over 20 pages of content. The search engine over at MySpace should be put out of its misery.

11. Ads That Annoy: Here’s one of the saddest parts about web development. We go to all the trouble of building a site that’s easy to use, easy to read, easy to navigate. It works on all browsers and doesn’t require any fancy plug-ins. It’s been quality checked again and again to root out errors. And then the webmaster hires an ad-serving business that coughs up annoying banner ads that flicker, move, dance around, or even shout at the user. The ads make dubious offers or even intrude upon the site’s usability with pop-ups or overlays — all of which damage the host site’s image and reputation. And when a user clicks on them, the banners take them far away. Lots of sites try to send visitors away before they’ve barely even landed. Now, whether ads are the best way for websites to make money is a whole other debate. But at the least, make sure they give the rest of your site a fighting chance.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to get a burger — all this talk of beef is making me hungry.

This is a post from the Nullvariable Web Consulting Blog.

My 11 Biggest Beefs About Websites