Stumbled across something interesting today – found that Google is now including a search box in the SiteLinks for sites that use Google search for their internal search engine. The example I came across was w3schools.com – check out the screenshot:
That’s pretty crazy – for smaller sites, that’s a really good reason to use Google search for your engine. When the big G starts including a search box for other sites (hello retail) – that’s going to change the game a bit..
One of my favorite blogs (just added to the blogroll, as a matter of fact) had a great post today entitled 41 Blog Success Tips from 10 Years of Blogging You Can Learn Today. The author is Chris Garrett, who is a professional blogger and consultant in the UK. If you haven’t read chrisg.com, I highly recommend it.
Back to the topic at hand, Chris lists 41 blog success tips that he has learned over the years. As I read through these (realizing how much better I should be doing with my own sad little blog), I came to the conclusion that these tips are not just good blogging advice, but good advice for any marketer/manager/worker to follow as well. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s happened to every one of you “service providers” out there. You have a wonderful, unique offering and were able to pick up some great big clients. They came to you because you were the best, or maybe you went to them and got lucky. Either way they signed right? And now they are using your wonderful product, and everything looks like it’s going to be great. After all, you are providing something that they can’t do for themselves right? What’s why they are willing to pay the big bucks for your premium package…
Yeah, wrong. Usually when you sign someone who is big enough for the situation above to ring true, they absolutely can do what you do. They just don’t want to. Maybe it’s time, maybe it’s money, maybe you are just their first step into a new area. Why is this important? Read the rest of this entry »
I just finished reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist – an awesome book. Warren Buffett, if you don’t know, is arguably the most successful investor of all time. He is the third richest person in the world, worth about $55 Billion, and has had a long systematic history of outperforming basically everyone else in his investments.
Speaking about his many successes, Buffett said the following:
“The best thing I did was choose the right heroes.”
Reading through the usual list of hundreds of blog posts that my Google Reader picks up every day, I came across two different articles on CSS design. Clean and clear CSS can save you hours of needless “figuring it out” on a large website or project, so I thought it would be good to share. Read the rest of this entry »
Poking around on LinkedIn today, I stumbled across the “Who’s Viewed My Profile” application. I don’t check it very often because I only run the free version, and you can’t see much detail about who is looking at your profile when you don’t pay. This time though, it showed me a name that intrigued me.
Everyone has a bad day. Don’t try and say you don’t, because you will be a liar and nobody likes a liar. Regardless of the cause, every now and again you just feel like throwing it all in, walking out the door and kicking everyone along the way.
Unfortunately most rations of paid time off won’t cover days such as these, so we have to battle through our own moods at work. The question for the day is: how does your mood affect the people around you? Read the rest of this entry »
Today I found out that if I don’t change a few things very soon, I am going to be the bottleneck in my team’s upcoming development projects. I will have people waiting around for me to catch up and get my piece of the puzzle finished. Never good. This realization made me review my thoughts on “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
The web development cycle is a lot like a manufacturing plant. A product (web page, widget, whatever) has to be treated and assembled by different machines (like business, development, QA) before it is a completed product. Whenever there is a sequence such as this, one part of the process will inevitably be the part that takes the longest and impedes the flow. This will cause all the parts downstream to wait and waste time sitting idle. Read the rest of this entry »
Over at eCommerce Optimization a well thought-through and very thorough list was posted called eCommerce & Shopping Cart Usability: 21 Best Practices. In this great article, the author ‘eCopt’ lists 20 very solid recommendations for any ecommerce site. The 21st on the other hand, is an absolute show stopper:
Test different combinations of best practices to see which ones produce the best results for your store and shopping cart.
You know the one I am talking about. He’s the guy in your office that the boss thinks is great but everyone who works with him thinks he’s a tool. Here are are the warning signs… Read the rest of this entry »
Rick Galan | 
Mar 4th, 2008| 
