get some spares in

Well, when was the last time you flew? When the plane was accelerating along the runway, did you wonder, maybe even briefly, whether you’d be coming down safely again?

Yet, when you got into your car today did you wonder whether you’d arrive safely at your destination?

Most people would answer yes to the first question, and no to the second. Why is that? After all, the chance of being in a road accident and dying are very much higher than being involved in a plane crash.

The reason is that you don’t really understand the risks involved, so you’re worried about the wrong thing.

It is the same in business. Are you really aware of the risks you’re taking? Have you got an adequate strategy in place should one of your key staff fall ill, or have an accident and not be able to work for a time? Or suppose the hard drive on your accounts computer fails and you lose key customer information? Companies going under do so more often because of the lack of backup plans than because of mis-management, because they perceive the risk as lower than it really is.

Or how about losing a contract because you didn’t get spare ink in for your printer and you ran out thirty minutes before the deadline? Or that you lost your scoping document an hour before a crucial client meeting because you didn’t save a copy as you were making it, and the computer crashed?

We usually go around thinking that “it won’t happen to me”, but it does and it will. Hard drives always fail, its just a matter of when, not if. Computers crash. Ink runs out. People get sick and accidents are unplanned and untimely.

Its a good idea to do a risk analysis and make some contingency plans now, and get that backup hard drive set up before it packs up on you.

Reach out, but watch out you do it properly

I recently found this very good post by Christian Amo on cross cultural web design. Its very timely since the world is getting more and more connnected, and with greater possibilities for creating designs for oversees companies, a more considered approach is needed.

The post covers navigation strategy, the colours in the website, the right tools for the right website, suitable images, professional translation of the website, and last but certainly not least: localised content. There is also a section on selecting keywords correctly for different languages.

You need to target well

I found a very nice blog on how to market effectively using Youtube. Can’t be bad as it got me thinking about how it would apply to me!
It goes through 15 key points from putting yourself in the shoes of your customer, the type and quality of videos, to points about social marketing.

Let him find you easily ....

I’ve been asked a number of times to get a web site to appear in the top of Google’s Search Engine Results pages, but in most cases the client is unaware that it’s a lengthy process (a few months to get a showing) and that it requires many things to be put in place.

First there’s On Page optimisation:

Getting the correct Keywords and using them in the -

Page Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, Body text, H1 Headings, Bold Text, Anchor Texts and Image Alt texts.

And you should make sure links between pages are not through images or Flash menus (ie are able to be followed by search engine bots).

Also there’s the Site Load Speed. There’s a great plugin for FireFox called Page Speed for checking just that.  Amongst a zillion things it checks for are that image dimensions are specified, images are optimised and scaled, the order of styles and scripts are optimised, CSS is put in the document head, the character set is specified early, CSS expressions are avoided, JavaScript loading is deferred till needed and Resources are served from a consistent URL.

And if you want to rank for local search use geo meta tags, put your local address on page bottoms, and your local address and phone (not a generic 0845 number or similar) in Contact Us.

You should also create an xml sitemap and register it with the search engines.

Generate new content on a regular basis. Having a blog or forum helps. Don’t forget to update the site map along with the content.

Then there’s Off-page optimisation:

Which basically means getting as many good links back to your site (they’re called backlinks). A good link means that the site that is linking to you is relevant to your site, is respected and has a good page rank. You can do this by registering with reputable directories, Google local and Yahoo local if relevant, blogging well (not just spam blogs) and leaving a link to your site, having a YouTube page that has updated content and a reference to your site, a Picassa page, a Slideshare page and other similar sites that can reference your site.

Social bookmarking of relevant content helps too.

Did I forget anything…?