An Open Question: Where’s Your Tech Pain?

By Kevin Powe

A brief interruption to the Website Heresies…

So, I was having a conversation with Catherine on the weekend about my Bold Plans to put together a new product for Be Awesome Online, with a tech focus. In the midst of discussing three possible plans, Catherine dropped the following question, leaden with purpose.

“Have you asked people what they want?”

That right there is the magic of Catherine, folks. Pointing out the obvious, the necessary, the next step. While your brain (mine, at least) is confecting grand sugar-spun tapestries, she reminds you of the absolutely necessary thing that part of you already knew, but had forgotten. Despite the fact that I’m reading The Four Steps To the Epiphany at the moment (like all the cool kids), I’d completely forgotten to validate the direction I was thinking to boldly start charging in.

So.

The purpose of this post is to correct that oversight. I will pledge my undying love and loyalty forever, if you could drop a comment responding to this post. Let us know where your technical pain is currently. Are there particular questions you’d like answered, or dim areas you’d like illuminated? If the Tech Fairy could wave a wand and fix something for you, what would it be?

I’d originally intended this post to accompany a survey. But after doing some thinking, I suspect the questions I’d put together would still be too far inside the mental box that’s in my head. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll use that as my sextant to help you set sail for Tech-Pain-Free Awesome.

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Website heresy: Change the goddamned world

By Catherine Caine

What topic do you need to be writing about in order to change the world?

Any of them, dearest. Any of them.

Most people have the wrong idea about how to change the world. They look at the big players and think “My plumbing supplies* website isn’t Gandhi. It isn’t Nelson Mandela. Therefore I will sell tap washers and leave the world-changing to dudes in robes.”

No! Any of us can change the world. Here’s two of the many ways…

Raising the general awesomeness level

Your excellent plumbing supplies website makes the world a better place by raising the standards of plumbing supplies websites. If you are thoughtful, and provide value, and write content, and configure your parts database search to be helpful and delightful, then you will get more business than your competitors. In order to keep up, they’re encouraged to improve their websites too. This then tips onto competitors at the outer edge of your service range. And it keeps tipping over, domino after domino of better plumbing websites. And then hardware websites. And then auto parts websites. And eventually the internet is a better place if you need to buy physical goods.

Will you see this part happen? Probably not. But it’s changed the world, nonetheless.

Raising YOUR awesomeness level

When you create an awesome website you change your world. You’re involved in an ongoing creative task, and that changes you. You likely make more money, and that changes you and your world. You receive more positive feedback and build more relationships, and that changes you too.

Those changes aren’t self-contained: they affect the world of your family, and your friends, and your customers, and your suppliers. Happy, profitable, generous, productive and creative you is a different person, a more awesome person. The world is changed, by you being better.

It’s a change you can observe in action:

- Your new extra income means you can take Friday afternoon off to watch your daughter’s soccer game. She’s so thrilled you’re there she tells every single member of her team. They all wave at you.
- You’ve learned how to explain technical concepts to laypeople. It’s improved your customer service dramatically; you don’t grimace when you see someone walk into the shop with a broken flush system and a confused look on their face.
- You help your sister-in-law start a small website for the charity she’s starting. She feeds you steak; she couldn’t afford to have the website done by professionals. It’s a good charity and you’re glad you could help it out. Mmm, charitable steak.
- The free resource you wrote on how to install a toilet without leaks has been downloaded 729 times. More than two dozen people have emailed to thank you for making it easier for them.
- People have started asking you how they can start a successful website too. You’ve told all of them about giving away resources and connecting on the internet, and a few have started doing it. Your best mate is shooting videos on how to build a good shed, and they’re great videos.

See? A better and more awesome world, just because you have a website. Incremental change is important! It can change the quality of someone’s hour, or weekend, or future. And often small change builds into gigantic change.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Write down five ways in which your website is changing the world. Then go and do five minutes of work toward those results.

How is your website changing the world? Tell us in the comments!

*I probably over-use the plumbing supplies example. I’m sorry, but it’s the best example I have found of a goods business that pretty much no-one thinks is sexy or cool. (My service business example is conveyancing.) If you have other examples, let me know so I can shake things up a bit.

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Website heresy: You don’t have to be an expert

By Catherine Caine

Content writing does not have to be put off until you have sixteen doctorates and three Nobel prizes. Whatever level of edumacation you’re at with your subject, you can still write about it NOW.

Level Zero: Newbie

Your audience: other complete beginners

How you write it: You’re brand-new to the subject and starting to feel it out; this is where you document your experience of learning the basics. What resources help? What confused you totally? What did you wake up at 2:37am with a sudden brainwave about? You’re not an expert at this stage, you’re three tiny steps ahead of the complete novice.

Include lots of reviews, explanations, and dissections of jargon. Interview more experienced people and ask all the obvious questions, because when you’re starting out the obvious questions often have really non-obvious answers. You can provide lots of value if you’re mature enough to admit how little you know; there are bajillions of people who aren’t brave enough to ask the dumb-ass questions you ask, and those people will read your content and love it.

Level One: Competent

Your audience: complete beginners and other basically proficient readers

How you write it: You know the basics now. Not only can you talk confidently about all the fundamentals, you’re starting to get into the more advanced topics, and forming your own opinions about common wisdom. You have a few options here:

1. Write your content like a higher-level version of the Level Zero (your journey into the more abstract and obscure topics). The tone stops being “Argh, what does that mean?” and becomes, “I know what I’m doing, now it’s time to learn more skills.”
2. Write an authoritative resource for complete beginners, from the view of a more experienced practitioner. You’re helping people learn stuff you didn’t know a year or two ago, and if you’re lucky (or good) you’ll remember the pain and confusion and write something that’s better for newbies than was available for you.

Level Two: Authority

Your audience: advanced beginners, the basically proficient, other authorities and experts

How you write it: You’re getting damn knowledgeable in your subject and people ask your advice. Even the experts talk about your new and groundbreaking thoughts. When you’re this confident and learnéd you have lots of options on how you can write:
1. Be a generalist: You know a bit about everything. You’re provide great content for filling in the gaps in other people’s knowledge.
2. Be a specialist: You know everything about one thing. When people want a definitive answer on a question in your area, they come to you.
3. Be multi-disciplinary: You know a heck of a lot about two (or more) different fields, and the way you bring them together makes you damn near unique.
4. For beginners: Why yes you can still be writing the entry-level stuff, if you want. You can aim for high-level beginners or go right back to the basics, if you are very very careful about not assuming too much knowledge.
5. For the competent: You can write for those who want to be more competent and have already mastered the fundamentals.
6. Authority-to-authority: You’re talking to your peers at a high level; readers with less expertise will be immediately confused and leave. You have whitepapers, interviews with experts and incredibly solid resources and tools. You’re a standard in the industry.

Level Three: Expert

Your audience: advanced beginners, the basically proficient, authorities and other experts

How you write it: Wow, the air’s thin up here. Stuff is named after you. You can write any way you like, really.

Extra tips

Of course, you can combine a bit of all of these. If you’re an authority you can write a complete newbie’s post when you start on a related subject that you’ve never studied.

Be honest about where you are! Whatever level you’re at, you’re not alone; it’s far far better to admit your gaps, even when you’re the expert.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Name the topics you write about and make a guesstimate of what level you’re at for each. If some are lower than you want, start planning how you’re going to increase your knowledge. Otherwise, get writing at the level you decide!

What level are you at for your subject? (It’s a hard question, I’m not sure how to answer it.) Tell us in the comments!

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Website heresy: You can definitely criticise your competitors

By Catherine Caine

“Write positive content! Don’t get into the negativity game! Don’t badmouth your competitors!” runs the conventional wisdom. In general, it’s okay advice. Certainly you don’t want to get a reputation for being a sarcastic jerk-off that sneers at everyone. (Unless that’s your position in the market. It’s not my style but some people like it.)

But you see things your competitors do that you’re appalled by. You know, since you are awesome, that you would never, ever do the shoddy, dodgy, inethical, cruel, lazy, high-handed, barbaric, stupid, money-grabbing and near-sighted crap that they do. And there is nothing wrong with letting the world know that you’re taking a stand against all those practices. There’s just one thing you have to do to make it work:

Never, ever give a hint about who you’re referring to when you criticise practices in your industry.

Let’s face it, it’ll be easy to avoid naming names… so many of the bad practices you’re enraged by are almost standard operation. They’re The Way Things Are Done, Mate, And If You Don’t Like It You Can Always Leave. In fact, the more widespread it is, the easier to take a stand.

Let’s get critical

First start by describing the horrible stuff your competitors do. Let me give you an example to get started on.

Here’s a thing that really ticks me off: so many small businesses end up with a website that doesn’t work and costs far far too much money. I’ve seen website designers who never think about what the business needs; they only think about the technology they can provide. So instead of helping the business develop an online strategy, target their clients and start planning the content, they build a box and call it done. Worse, they often build a “custom CMS” or a uniquely coded HTML website that requires the business to come back to the designer every time they want to change any content. So they don’t change the content, and the website is useless.

Now that was a moderately scathing condemnation of the business practices of many web designers. But I didn’t name any of them, or identify them uniquely. Even if some of the ones I was specifically thinking about read that rant, they won’t know I’m talking about them.

Better than you

This really gets powerful when you take those points and use them to start talking about what you do differently. If I ever decided to build websites professionally (and I won’t, because I enjoy teaching much more than code-wrangling) my services page would say this:

I won’t talk with you about the technology; that’s my job. What you and I will discuss is who your website is for and what you want it to say. I’ll help you design a strategy that will improve your relationship with your current and future customers, sell your products or services, and still let you sleep at night. Once we know what you need, then I’ll do the technical stuff to build you a website. It’ll be entirely under your control, and simple to use so you don’t need to keep paying someone to keep it current.

I’ve taken a bunch of my strongest criticisms of web designers and made it all about the customer, and how I’m defining my relationship with them. The competitors aren’t mentioned at all, but I’m still criticising the heck out of them.

The more well-known the faults of your industry are (plumbers are never on time, techies sneer at laypeople) the more effective it is for you to describe the way you’ll do business as a positive (we’ll always be on time, we will always explain in jargon-free language) instead of a negative (we won’t be late, we won’t use jargon).

Of course, this brings us back to the start… after starting by challenging it, I’m now agreeing with the conventional wisdom (“Write positive content! Don’t get into the negativity game! Don’t badmouth your competitors!”). Well, to a point. Defining yourself entirely by your competitors is a bad idea. Writing all your content about what you won’t do is a bad idea. But you can still obey those guidelines and rip a new one off your competitors, too.

Your 5-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Write a declaration of how your business operates that is better than your competitors, without mentioning them in any way.

Can you name three ways you’re better than your competitors? Tell us in the comments!

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Website heresy: It IS all about you, a little

By Catherine Caine

“Your website is not about you. It’s all about your visitors.” Makes sense, right? Lots of experts say it. I used to say it. Now I don’t say it any more, because I think it has two gigantic problems if you want to create awesome websites.

You aren’t Santa Claus

Santa Claus can work all year making toys and then in one night of incredible generosity give his entire year’s work away in exchange for nothing more than a few cookies and a glass of milk. Santa doesn’t have to pay the rent on the North Pole and the elves work for free.

But since you aren’t a mythological figure you need to be getting something of value back in exchange for your labours. It doesn’t have to be money: it can be support, connection, increased awareness, volunteers, inspiration or validation. I’ll mostly refer to money here because that’s where most people go crazy.

If you fall into the “It’s all about your readers” trap, soon you find that you’re completely incapable of asking your readers for anything. When you started this awesome website, it was with the goal of exchanging something of equal value, right? Money in exchange for your services. Appreciation in exchange for your art. Volunteers in exchange for your inspiring story. You believed it was an exchange of equal value then, but now you feel massively guilty about suggesting that they give you anything more than their attention. Stop that! *wrist slap* You’re not asking them to give you money! You’re asking them if they want to exchange it for something of equal value. Your advice is valuable. Your skills are valuable. Your goods are valuable. The rest is head games you have to find a way to get past.

(Note: if your goods and services are not actually valuable: you need to quit, right now.)

Humans are selfish creatures. There is a limited time for how long you can keep giving and giving to make an awesome website without getting anything in exchange. You might not get your first choice (say, bucketloads of money) at the start, but there are lots of other exchanges that make it worthwhile. Comments in exchange for a post. Testimonials in exchange for free advice. Friendship in exchange for friendship.

Of course, this piece of advice exists for a reason. You really don’t want to be the gimme-gimme-gimme schmuck who makes absolutely everything into a cost/benefit analysis: “It took me seven hours to write this free e-book, but I only got six tweets about it, so it wasn’t worth it.” You have to start by giving. Just keep in mind that you can’t sustain giving all the time unless you’re Santa Claus. In which case, where’s the flying pony I asked for?

Welcome to BlandCorp, how may I direct your call?

Another way this piece of advice gets mangled and problematic is by taking a good thing too far. There are lots of business websites that are all about their owner. They’re like the annoying presenter who introduces each guest by telling a long and rambling story about how they met them and what they thought about it and how their lives were changed and you’re sitting slumped in your seat thinking, “Get on with it already! This isn’t about YOU!” Those are not awesome websites.

Note: we aren’t talking about a charming and personal rambling blog like Dooce, which is all about her and that is fine and fantastic. If Dooce ran a plumbing supplies website and was as delighfully inconsequential about washer fittings, she would be much less popular. This is all about what people want from your website. On business-related websites, they want to solve a problem, and they don’t want you to get in the way.

No-one wants to be the “Well, I think” loser. This is good! But in order to focus on the visitor, some people remove all traces of personality from their copy. This is very, very bad.

Corporate writing is the devil.

And not the exciting devil of red tights and horns and some seriously awesome music. Nope, corporate writing is the evil of banal. Boring. Soulless. Non-human. Death of awesomeness and everything fades to grey. Suckitude.

Take the advice of “It’s not about you” too far, and suddenly it’s not about anyone. If you censor out all traces of yourself, your content is dull, and your website is dull. Your content needs to serve your visitors, by providing them advice and insight and information and comparisons. But it also needs to serve your visitors by providing you. You’re an important part of the value of your awesome websites! It’s the reason you aren’t like the other businesses that do similar work. Don’t be afraid to include small details about yourself in your content, and for the love of all that’s awesome write in your own voice! It’s more enjoyable, it’s more effective and it’s more memorable.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

1. Are you asking people to exchange something of value? Asking for comments, telling them why they should sign up for the newsletter, talking about your services and how they can help your visitors? Make a plan to include clear and helpful calls to action. Don’t let the guilts get you: you’re not asking for a favour, you’re offering an exchange.

2. Are you stripping all traces of your personality out of your copy? If so, take 5 minutes to plan a re-write of one key piece of content: your homepage, your About Us page, your sales page… how can you write it to solve their problems but in your voice?

Have you been reluctant to ask for the sale? Found yourself writing like you worked for the government? Tell us in the comments!

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3 tips to make your site more social

By Catherine Caine

We interrupt the stream of heresies for a guest post by Mike. Less controversial, but it’s funny and makes a lot of sense.
Whether you’ve paid much attention to it…err…scratch that. Whether you’ve jumped into the social media trend or not, one clear fact remains: Social media has taken over the web as we know it.
And [...]

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Website heresy: Websites are worth the pain (maybe)

By Catherine Caine

Websites are not for the faint-hearted. Now I’ve firmly discouraged you, let’s talk about why they’re worth it.
You’re the kid with all of the Muppet Babies
(You probably have to be my age and raised in Australia to understand that one. Muppet Babies were the craze when I was six.)
Maybe you’re big and tough and you [...]

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Website heresy: Websites aren’t for everybody

By Catherine Caine

Websites are simple, and almost anyone with internet access can start one. But not everyone should.
Do not start a website if…
No-one is searching for your topic
There are few things sadder than a party that no-one comes to. Don’t make your website be the one dude standing in the corner with a silly hat and a [...]

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Website heresy: Methods are magical feathers

By Catherine Caine

Methods. Processes. Systems. Turn-key solution. Plug-and-play. Just add water. We have a hunger for processes, especially for tested and repeatable processes, in our website-creating. What, we ask imploringly, is the Right Way to run my website/write my content/build my followers/scale my offerings/make $17,263.97 in the next month?
The internet is new(ish), and [...]

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Website heresy: Don’t start with goals

By Catherine Caine

Website goals: Important. Useful. Done waaaay too early.
Imagine your new website is your child. You’re so proud of her, so convinced she’s the best at everything. You see her running around the backyard and you think, “Damn, lookit her go!” So of course you enter her into the marathon. No, wait! Actually, you let her [...]

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