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May 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Does Your Commute Suck? Go ROWE!

Today’s blog from Cali and Jody was awesome. It is titled “Does Your Commute Suck?” and touches on some things that are extremely broken about today’s traditional workplace. We migrated to a ROWE at SpinWeb last year and we have been very happy with the results. We no longer talk about hours or work schedules or “making up time”. We focus on the work. We focus on making our clients happy. We focus on the things that are important.

After some recent meetings with Cali and Jody and some great discussions about bringing ROWE to the masses, I am now authorized to facilitate ROWE migrations for businesses that would like to take the plunge. So many companies and their employees could benefit from this adaptive change and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to help others through a migration.

ROWE is not telecommuting, flex hours, or working from home. ROWE is an adaptive, cultural change. Did I mention that ROWE increases productivity?

If you are interested in migrating your business to a ROWE and enjoying the benefits it brings, I would love to hear from you.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Productivity Tagged With: ,
May 18, 2009 By 2 Comments

12 Tips for a Great Chamber / Economic Development Alliance Website Design

At SpinWeb, we have a particular interest in helping local communities thrive and flourish using the Internet.  For this reason, we love working with municipalities and agencies within, which includes chambers and economic development alliances. I have been researching both chambers and economic development alliances recently in preparation for an upcoming project and I’ve noticed that though they have different objectives, the two entities can often co-exist in the same website and be very complementary. So what are some ways a website for a chamber and economic development alliance can serve the community?

1. Publish a user-friendly online sites and buildings database. Make sure it is easy for interested businesses to research locations in your community via your website. You want to attract new business, so be easy to work with by giving businesses the tools they need to get information fast and allow them to search on detailed attributes.

2. Invest in a high-quality image. Your website represents your community and should be attractive and modern. Chambers and economic development alliances with beautiful websites make the community look like an attractive place to live and do business.

3. Offer educational and networking events with online registration. By offering events and classes, you not only promote networking in your community, but also increase the skill level of your local work force. Be sure your website clearly lists your calendar of events and offers online registration, which increases attendance.

4. Offer an online Chamber Marketplace to promote commerce. Allow chamber members to create online profiles and place projects out for bit to other chamber members. Then, allow members to submit bids on those projects via your website. This encourages commerce between chamber members, as well as increases the value of a chamber membership.

5. Include social media links to make information sharing easy. Make sure that your sites and buildings, jobs, news, projects for bid, and events all include a “share” option to make it easy for site visitors to post your web site information to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks. The easier it is to distribute your content, the more likely it is to be seen.

6. Publish an online employment database. Stimulating employment in the community sh0uld be a strong objective for your website and one great way to do this is to offer an online employment database. Allow chamber and/or community members to post job openings on your employment database and offer candidates the ability to apply online for those jobs. This creates an easier way to connect jobs with candidates and increases the value of your site. Don’t forget to include a “share” button to make it easy for site visitors to post jobs to their social networks.

7. Invest in search engine marketing to attract businesses. A great chamber and/or economic development alliance website is only useful when someone finds it. Be sure your community is found by creating targeted keyword campaigns that attract the right visitors to your site.

8. Promote notable local businesses via an active press room. Recognize your local businesses via your website by publishing regular articles that feature local businesses. This keeps your website full of fresh content which has a positive impact on your search engine rankings and helps your local businesses get more visibility.

9. Publish a video podcast featuring local businesses. A podcast is easy and inexpensive to set up and is a great way to promote members of your community. Send an intern from your local university out with a video camera once a week to a local business to do a 5-minute “spotlight”. This gives local businesses a chance to get exposure when they might not otherwise be able to afford advertising. It’s also a recruiting tool to help attract businesses to your community since it shows that you are committed to supporting them once they arrive.

10. Sell products online. Many businesses in your community would like to sell their products online but don’t have the resources to do so. Help them out by offering to sell their products online for them via your website. Additionally, you can also sell city/community-branded merchandise online, such as clothing and other items. Build your community’s brand while adding revenue!

11. Auto-bill your members via self-serve online tools. Make it easier for chamber members to renew and submit payments by allowing them to log in and manage their accounts via your website. Be sure you accept credit cards and e-checks. This not only reduces barriers to renewals, but reduces administrative expenses in your office.

12. Publish a great e-mail newsletter. Send out your email newsletter on a regular schedule and highlight community events to increase attendance.

Whether your chamber and economic development alliances are using separate web sites or integrated into one site, these tips will help add value to your online presence, attract new businesses to the community, and help local businesses grow and flourish.

Filed Under: Design, Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , ,
May 9, 2009 By 1 Comment

10 Customer Service Details that Matter to your Customers

Every company talks about how great their customer service is. Put 5 business owners in a room and ask them how they are different and they will probably all say “we provide great customer service”. Great customer service is critical to building a great company but how many of us take the time to quantify what that means? Here are 10 little details that matter to your customers.

1. Do you keep your promises? Do you speak in absolutes and follow through or do you say that you will finish your customers project “in about 3 weeks”? Even if the time line is longer than expected, customers appreciate knowing what to expect. Delivering on time strengthens trust.

2. Do you double-check (and triple-check) your work? Few things are more frustrating and embarrassing than a customer pointing out mistakes in your work. As a customer, this irritates me a great deal because it creates extra work for me and weakens trust.

3. Do you answer your phone? Is your receptionist friendly and knowledgeable? Does every employee answer the phone with a positive attitude? I’m amazed at how many times I call a company the phone is answered by someone who sounds like he or she is annoyed at the interruption. It’s even more annoying when I get an auto-attendant. Your customers want to talk to a person, not a machine.

4. Do you ask questions? Too often we get caught up in all the great things we are doing that we forget that our customers have needs, which is why they have hired us in the first place. How often do you call your customers and ask them what challenges they are facing right now? Not only does it show that you care, but it might also open the door for you to find opportunities to solve more of their problems with your products and services.

5. Do you keep up with the latest best practices? When your customer comes to you and says “XYZ Company is doing this, should we do this, too?”, it erodes trust if you don’t have an answer or appear to be uninterested in evolving.

6. Do you gracefully help customers leave? No company has a 100% retention rate. Occasionally customers leave. When this happens, do you become uncooperative and belligerent or do you politely ask for feedback on how you can improve in the future? Do you assist them during the transition? By behaving in a professional manner when customers leave, you leave the door open for them to remember you favorably when their new vendor drops the ball. Besides, it’s just the right thing to do.

7. Do you send referrals to your customers? Few things will please your customers more than if you send business their way. I love being on the lookout for referrals for my customers. I feel strongly that I should do everything I can do help my customers succeed.

8. Do you believe in your product or service? Your customers (and prospective customers) can tell whether you believe in what you are selling. You must truly believe that your company provides the best solution possible for your customers. You must get excited about what you do.

9. Are you on time for appointments? We are all busy and time is valuable. Your customers will appreciate it when you respect their time and will certainly notice when you are consistently late.

10. Do you admit when you are wrong? Do you make it right? Nobody’s perfect and we all drop the ball at some point. The important thing is that we admit when we are wrong, own up to it, and make it right. Whatever it takes, make sure your customer remembers how you solved the problem with integrity.

When someone asks you about your customer service or how you are different, how specific can you be? Do you know what matters to your customers?

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity Tagged With:
April 11, 2009 By 2 Comments

The death of the webmaster

Ok, not literally… perhaps another title might be “The re-assignment of the webmaster” but that doesn’t sound as dramatic. In any case, I still see a particular trend on this subject that bothers me. SpinWeb works with a lot of associations which are typically led by a board of directors and sometimes assisted by a staff. What I still see in many cases is the old-fashioned concept of the traditional “webmaster”. The webmaster is typically a single person within the association, either a volunteer or a staff member, who is in charge of updating the association web site. This person may have special technical knowledge that makes him or her qualified to write the code necessary to make changes on the site. All changes go through this webmaster and only he or she holds the keys to web content.

This structure is antiquated and problematic because it creates a bottleneck that delays content updates. If all updates are channeled through one person, then the association’s web site is in a very precarious position. The association’s web site should be the most current and most active communication tool in use and key leaders in the organization should be able to post content in real time without having to channel it through a webmaster.

The more enlightened model that I like to recommend is that associations manage their web sites via a mature Application Suite (also sometimes called a Content Management System) that allows multiple board and/or staff members to update the association web site in real time. News, events, and other information can then be managed by those people who actually create the content. For example, SpinWeb creates sites that allow association boards and staff members to give “keys” to specific people throughout the association that allows those people to update content within their areas. No special technical knowledge is required… only basic computer skills. We have created sites in which the entire board of directors has control over website content and can make up-to-the-minute changes 24/7, which allows them to react very quickly and communicate to members in a timely fashion.

If your organization is still in the world of channeling website updates through a “webmaster”, please talk to me. There is a better way :)

Filed Under: Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , ,
April 5, 2009 By 2 Comments

Improving the Usability of your Pricing

Our Creative Director at SpinWeb, Rob Alan, sent me this blog post today that I absolutely loved:

Is there a better way for you to price your product? – (37signals).

I was very happy to see it because it validates something we’ve been doing for the past year – improving the usability of our pricing.

As an interactive agency, we come from a world where most companies like us are used to a sales process that involves lots of planning meetings, big proposals that go back and forth, free consulting to create estimates, and vague pricing based on a mysterious number of hours that it may take to complete a project. From what I’ve seen, this process typically leads to projects that go over budget and time, disagreements over money, and end up with both parties unhappy.

I’m very happy to say that SpinWeb has adopted a much simpler pricing and delivery process that involves three phases: blueprint, design, and deployment. Our pricing is 100% transparent. We don’t talk in terms of “hours” or “estimates”. We break our service down into smaller, logical chunks of work that we can predict and deliver with confidence. We also tell our clients exactly what each chunk will cost. I’ve sometimes met with a prospective client for the first time and then within 45 minutes the paperwork is signed and web site is in production simply because we make our process so easy to understand. In less than an hour, any prospective client can have all the information he or she needs to make a decision. It’s very refreshing.

This model has completely revolutionized our business. Arguments over money have virtually disappeared, we’ve shortened our sales process by about 90%, and our clients are happy. I never would have thought that an agency that creates web sites could “productize” design services like this but I’m amazed at what we’ve done. Additionally, it allows us even more design creativity because we can focus our time and energy on great design rather than on managing inefficient production processes.

Take another look at your business and try to find ways to create repeatable processes and pricing models. It might be easier than you think and it just may help your sales, as well.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , ,
March 22, 2009 By 2 Comments

Favorite Ubiquitous Capture Tools

As many of you know, I’m a productivity junkie (I happily drink the GTD Kool-Aid) and love to tweak and improve my personal productivity system. In the course of doing this, I’ve settled on a few great tools that assist me with ubiquitous capture. This allows me to capture and retain ideas, actions, and concepts that I want to act on later but don’t have time to process in the moment. These are some of the tools that I have found useful.

Things. I’ve gone through a number of todo list apps, including Nozbe and OmniFocus, but Things is the nicest one I’ve found yet. It’s a Mac app (Sorry, Windows folks) and it’s clean, fast, and flexible. It allows me to sync up tasks with my iPhone and gives me quick keyboard shortcuts for capturing items. When I’m at my computer, Things is my capture mechanism.

Hipster PDA. If I’m not at my computer but at my office or at home, I can easily grab my hipster PDA made up of notecards and a clip. Cheap, easy to use, and effective. Then, I can drop my notecards into my inbox for later processing. It also makes me feel like the guy in Chaos Theory, which is awesome :)

Jott. If I’m out and about and have no hipster PDA available, Jott comes to the rescue. It’s a great application that costs $4/month and allows me to speak notes into my cell phone which are then transcribed and emailed to me for later processing.

After trying many of the tools and methods out there in the GTD community, I’ve found that I can successfully capture everything that comes to mind with one of these three tools so that I can process ideas and actions later without getting distracted in the moment.

What are your ubiquitous capture methods? I’d love to hear about them here.

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With:
March 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Network of Women in Business Embraces Smart Online Tools

Today, SpinWeb launched a shiny new web site for the Network of Women in Business, also known as NOWIB. The site is located at www.nowib.com. I am thrilled to talk about this client because it was such a pleasure to create this site. The team at NOWIB was great to work with and everyone was always respectful and helpful the whole process truly felt like teamwork.

It’s also very exciting to see a networking organization like NOWIB really take advantage of our tools in a really smart way. For example, NOWIB is using the Membership module to store, manage, and bill members. This allows members to log into the web site and manage profile information, as well as pay bills online. It allows NOWIB to set up paperless recurring billing for members which saves huge amounts of time. They are also using the Events module for online registration, as well as Email Marketing for a great email newsletter. The NOWIB saw the tools that we recommended and embraced the technology to really take the organization to the next level.

The great new design was also fun to do! The new look and feel is cleaner and easier to navigate and helps NOWIB project a much more credible image to prospective members.

We at SpinWeb are grateful for the opportunity to work with NOWIB and I am very happy to see the new site online. Thanks, NOWIB!

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,
March 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Interested in Feedback? Keep Your Surveys Short.

As a member of a number of associations and networking groups, I receive a lot of surveys. It always amazes me how long and cumbersome most of these surveys are. Inevitably they will be multi-page monsters that require me to type things in and fill in blanks. 99% of the time these surveys end up falling prey to my delete key. Do the senders of these surveys really expect to get a reasonable response when the surveys are this long and complicated?

In order to maximize your response rate, use the following guidelines:

  1. Keep your surveys short. 5-7 questions should be the maximum.
  2. Make all questions one-click multiple choice. Do not ask your readers to fill in blanks or type in text unless it’s an optional final question for other comments.
  3. Keep your surveys to one page.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to tell your readers that your survey will take 2 minutes or less to complete. This sets expectations and reduces the anxiety caused by all the other awful surveys they received. If I can see the entire survey on one page, then I know exactly what to expect, which lowers my anxiety level. If every question is on it’s own page, then I get more and more anxious as I continue because I keep thinking “when will this end?”

If you really want a useful response from your recipients, keep your surveys short and to the point. This will result in data you can actually use.

Filed Under: Design, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: ,
March 4, 2009 By 1 Comment

Be Efficient by Re-using Your Content

With all the different mediums available to us today, it can be an overwhelming task to try to keep up. For this reason, I recommend writing content that you can re-use. When blogging, for example, use the same post in your blog, your email newsletter, your Smaller Indiana blog, your Facebook note, and send a link out on Twitter. Then, if you have a need to present information at a speaking engagement, turn it into a presentation or a BNI Educational Moment.

Don’t re-invent the wheel in every medium… re-use your content and get more mileage from every piece.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology
March 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Do, or do not. There is no try

Those of us old enough to have grown up watching Star Wars will instantly recognize the immortal words of Yoda:

“Do, or do not. There is no try.”

Not only is this good advice for a young Jedi, but a worthy philosophy by which to live – especially in business. I am becoming more and more convinced that there are two categories of people in the world: those who try and those who make it happen.

Making it happen is not a result of talent, ability, or special knowledge. It is a decision. My network is filled with great people who have a lof of talent, ability, and knowledge. However, when it comes to finding those who actually making things happen, I find that the list gets a little shorter.

Making it happen is not a matter of trying your best, working hard, or catching some luck. It is a matter of envisioning the outcome, deciding that it will happen, and doing whatever it takes to reach that outcome. I encounter people all the time who, when asked if they can do something, respond with things like “I’ll try,” “I hope so,” or “I’ll do my best.” This is admitting that you have not committed to the outcome. By hiding behind vague statements of hope, you reveal that you have not made a decision to reach the finish line. This sets the stage for failure and for disappointing those who are depending on you.

I conduct regular workshops at SpinWeb on various topics like marketing, technology, and productivity. For  a while, I was in the world of “I’ll try” as I worked on putting together presentations and outlines. My plan was to schedule my first workshop after I put together the presentation. Finally, I realized that I had not fully committed to the workshop so I turned the plan around by choosing a date, publishing it on our web site, and opening it up for online registration. By doing this, I made the decision that the workshop was going to happen and that I had no choice but to get my materials together in time. I made a decision to simply make it happen. Guess what? It happened.

Next time you need to produce something of value, are you going to try or are you going to make it happen? Those who choose the latter are the ones who accomplish great things.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Productivity
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