Reflect for a few minutes: you’ve been growing your website in small increments over time. We don’t notice how much a child has grown until their shoes mysteriously don’t fit, or how much our website has slowly improved. 1. Do you take regular measurements of a few key metrics? If not, open up a spreadsheet…
Monthly Archives: February 2010
5 minute mission: Finish something
1. Go through the 5-minute missions and pick one you want to do but haven’t done yet. 2. Do it. 3. Tell us about it in the comments. 4. Enjoy the hell out of the rest of your day!
5 minute mission: Go above and beyond
1. Choose one of the boring, pedestrian tasks you perform every day. 2. Do it gloriously well. Instead of a “Thanks Pete” response on an email, reply with something thoughtful and useful. Include a personalised note with the package you’re sending out. Find an article you like and write a good recommendation. Take the time…
Emphasize the important tasks
photo credit: RodneyRamsey Design is a scary word to most of us, but here’s one guideline that will make it easier for you to decide what’s right. 1. Write down the three most important actions you want someone to take on your website: signing up for the newsletter reading the blog requesting a quote buying…
Super-duper and free
Offer something that’s VERY valuable, for free. Not the last six broken outmoded widgets in the store… how about one copy of the hottest new widget that all the kids want? Or ten copies? Or a hundred? Choose a number that won’t destroy your cashflow, but still makes you faintly uncomfortable. And tell everyone about…
Fire someone
The client that makes the receptionist cry, the never-reliable supplier, the sales rep who plays Facebook games all day… who is the person in your work day that makes you grit your teeth and endure? Whoever it is, there’s a way to be free of them… Fire them. I know, especially in the case of…
Find new ideas
photo credit: somegeekintn Ideas are tricky little buggers: sometimes you have to step outside of your usual routines to trap the good ones. In the list below, steer away from actions you perform regularly. Try something new and you’ll discover a bunch of new ideas lurking! 1. Buy a book. Buying a book instead of…
Review your navigation
photo credit: austinevan Website navigation is one of the most important design decisions you can make: for new visitors it’s their only map, and for regular visitors it’s the path back to the stuff they liked. Depressingly, it’s easy to get wrong and hard to do right, but there are easy improvements you can make….
Balance your benefits
photo credit: DorkyMum All the work you do benefits someone: 1. Your customer 2. You 3. Both of you 4. Neither of you Think about the five tasks you spend most of your time on. What category are they in? Mostly 1 is bad. You’ll go broke, financially and emotionally, if you’re not getting any…
Nurture your followers
1. Go spend 2 minutes and 58 seconds to watch this video on leadership by Derek Sivers (http://sivers.org/ff). 2. Spend the remaining 2 minutes and 2 seconds (and then the next fifteen minutes, probably) writing down stuff you can do to encourage that first follower to get up and dance with you. What do they…