Return on Intention

Lately I have been talking to small business owners about how the web can increase their business. Every so often I get a response from someone in the room that goes something like this, “My website doesn’t do anything for my business.”

The peculiar thing about this statement is that it is most often said to avoid talking about the web and how a company could use it to reach business goals. Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t this the wrong statement to make to get out of doing anything? If you website isn’t doing anything for your business, shouldn’t you fix it? I guess it would be more accurate to say “I don’t care about the Internet or what I could do with it.” Of course, saying that brings up many other issues, so perhaps it shouldn’t be said either. Would it make sense to say “I don’t care about customers.” From what I have seen, caring is the one thing that separates the entrepreneurs that make it from the ones that don’t.

So lets assume for a minutes that your website isn’t doing anything for your business. How do we fix that? First we find the problem.

Find the Problem

Install some tracking software. There is no excuse for not having this, Google is giving it away for free. Google analytics is a good place to start on getting information about your website.

Look at the Data

Now that you have some tracking software, what does it say? If it says you have no one coming to your website, then your first problem is to get your target market to know about your website. You can do this several ways and to get a start in the right direction you can download a free e-book on increasing traffic.

If you are getting traffic, but they don’t do anything, you have a different problem. Check for the following on your website and in your analytics:

1. Is my website easy to use?
2. Can people find what they are looking for?
3. Is it clear from the first page users come to where they are and what my business does?
4. Do I have a call to action, or do I ask explicitly for them to do something like sign up for a newsletter, or contact a sales person?
5. Does my call to action tell the user what they get out of it?

Start with this short list and if you have any doubts about any item on it, start to change your webiste a bit at a time and see what helps. Continue this and your website will start to effect your business. Chances are, if you do this, you won’t end up spending tons of money.

 Dave Thomas speaks about Linux and Nagios [18:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dave Thomas was the last presenter at this years barcamp. He spoke about Linux, open source software, and what the state government is doing with it. I was amazed to hear that the Justice Department where Dave works used any open source software at all. I though that Microsoft and other large companies had the government wrapped up in a little bow, but according to Dave, that is not the case. With the need to cut costs continuing to be important, many state agencies are looking to open source software to help out.

 Programming with Scratch by Adam Thomas [11:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Adam was the youngest of the BarCamp presenters this year. I believe he is still in elementary school. He came with his father David Thomas, but not because he needed a baby sitter. He came to talk about Scratch. Scratch is a visual programming environment for kids, made by the folks at MIT to introduce kids to programming concepts. It allows children to work on projects that they can post online for other Scratch users to look at, and vote on. Not only was Adam knowledgeable about his topic and created his presentation himself, but he also had a good presentation style. He didn’t just read from his slides but added commentary of the top of his head when appropriate. I was impressed. Take a listen.

 Gabriel Ortiz talks on StupidFilter: Saving Web 2.0 From Itself [24:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Gabriel Ortiz is the developer of StupidFilter and at this years barcamp he spoke about it. He talks about how the concept of StupidFilter came about, what it does and why the name may not have been the greatest choice. Gabriel has a co-presenter, but unfortunately, his name wasn’t posted on the BarCamp Albuquerque wiki, and the recording didn’t start in time to catch his name. I can only hope someone leaves a comment or sends me an email so I can update this post with the second speakers name.

UPDATE – the Co-presenter is Paul Starr

 Daniel Lyons presentation on ReST [19:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What is ReST? So much less than you’ve heard, according to Daniel Lyons. Daniel is a technologist  and my business partner at seven-gen. His presentation at this years BarCamp was an overview of ReST (Representational state transfer). There are some code snippets and comparisons you may not be able to follow in audio, but a good overview non the less.

 X is for XMPP: An Open Messaging Primer [41:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jack Moffitt spoke twice at BarCamp this year. On day one he covered Start-ups and you can find that talk here. On the second day he covered XMPP, a messaging protocol he has been looking into and using. This talk covers some groud to get you up and running with XMPP is and can do.

Yesterday (Wednesday January 21st) I attended the first official meeting of Webuquerque, the web focused section of the New Mexico Adobe Users Group. I have been scheduled to speak to this group in November on Marketing, but this time around there was no presentation, just a chance to get together, see the group and meet the other presenters. It was a great night for several reasons:

1. I won a door prize (a book on Adobe Air for Javascript Developers)
2. I got to see some people haven’t seen in a while and meet a few news ones
3. I had some really good conversations with other web folks about web stuff

I usually attend other get togethers, like the Albuquerque Web Geeks Meet-ups, but often people go there to get away from their work, not talk more about it. There seemed to be many people at the Webuquerque group that we’re waiting for a group that not only accepted, but encouraged shop-talk. I am one of them, and I think this group will work out very nicely. 

If you are interested and around town when the events occur (every 1st Wednesday) stop by and say hi. I promise I will get more sleep before the next meeting.