It’s time to shake things up here in BeAwesomeOnlineLand. (Did you hear someone start playing Eye of the Tiger? Weird.) We’ve just completed two months of how-tos and daily 5-minute missions, and gotten to know a lot about you and where you’re at and you’ve let us know how we’ve helped you, and these are [...]
You'll start & grow a website that's as awesome as you are.
5 minute mission: Reflect on your progress
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 and [...]
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 to write a great comment.
Make [...]
5 minute mission: Emphasize the important tasks
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 your product
writing a comment
sharing a link
2. Get someone [...]
5 minute mission: 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 [...]
5 minute mission: 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 the problematic [...]
5 minute mission: Find new ideas
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 borrowing it makes you [...]
5 minute mission: Review your navigation
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.
1. Remove confusing names [...]
5 minute mission: Balance your benefits
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 benefit from your work.
Mostly 2 is bad. Your customers [...]