Redbox Biz Blog

I have not been writing many articles lately (I used to write more in 2004 - 2006).

That could be due to the many things I have on my plate. Business is definitely growing [not that I am complaining! ] so that leaves me little time for writing.

I promised to share more information in this blog (as part of the resolutions for the year) so I am keeping to my end of the promise.

Writing has always been a stress-reliever. I quite enjoy sharing little tips and pointers plus it always helps me NOT to repeat myself when I speak to clients. I just email them the articles I’ve written so they can read for themselves in their free time.

So this time around, an article titled How to Build a Website that Search Engines Absolutely Love. Read it at http://ezinearticles.com/?id=930902. Ezine Articles is the only place I submit my articles to.

And once you’re done reading, come back and share with me what you think. Or even suggest some article titles - I’ll be happy to oblige with the articles.

To your website success,
Nic

Chinese New Year is creeping up on us and rather quickly too.

In the spirit of the Year of the Rat, here’s something you can do - eat and have a chance to do a good deed.

I won’t repeat myself since it’s been blogged already by Krista.

Go on to her blog and read why tossing fresh fish can be mutually rewarding.

I’ve been reading 2 books which I find intriguing.

Intriguing because I picked both up at the same time and read both at the same time (a habit born out of buying too many books and not having enough time to read one by one so I read a couple of books at one go) but what struck me is that both books are really complementary to each other!

I started off with Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat”. I had read his earlier book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” about 2 years ago and found him a reasonably logical writer so I went and bought his next book. Friedman is a journalist so he writes in a way that’s easy to understand.

“The World is Flat” has been a consistent bestseller for sometime now. I think people are still coming to grips with this monster called globalisation. So if you want to understand how globalisation crept up on us overnight, Friedman’s book is your bible to understanding why the world has changed dramatically in the course of the past 10 years.

Like most books, it gives an exegesis of what happened while we were sleeping. It clears the cobwebs and gives us some form of understanding of where the world is heading and more importantly, our roles in this new world. It allows us to see how the world has changed based on Friedman’s 10 “flatteners” or equalisers which have changed the world.

It makes for provocative reading, definitely.

On the other hand, I also picked up Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”. If Friedman’s book is an explanation of what happened, then Pink’s book is the solution to figuring out where we stand and how we can continue to progress despite a flat world.

Think of Friedman’s book as a macro vision of the world. This is where the world (and us) are headed. This is what’s happening on a big level.

Complementing Friedman is Pink who gives us the tools, solutions and ideas on a micro level. Pink gives us solutions on how we can continue to live and prosper in a flat world by focusing on what’s here.

What I enjoyed tremendously about Pink’s book is that he says the new world needs the whole brain to function; you cannot survive on left brain thinking anymore. In fact, left brain thinking can only go so far. To survive in today’s flat, flat world, you need left and right brain thinking.

In fact, more and more people are relying on right brain thinking these days - your right brain is about the creative you. (The left brain is the logical you.) And he says the right-brainers will rule the world. Strong statement, that but it comes with lots of examples how the world really is veering towards those who are creativity-inclined.

I believe that reading Friedman alone won’t inspire you; in fact one might end up more depressed. Especially if one is American and one’s job is outsourced to India or China or wherever it is cheaper and faster to get things done. Friedman does give some ideas how one can continue to keep one’s job (assuming one’s American) but it is equally relevant to us in Asia too. Yet, Friedman stops short of truly elaborating how to prevent oneself from being totally redundant and VSS-ed and outsourced.

Here’s where Pink comes in. He’s like the fairy godmother. His book shows you particular steps you can follow to bring your right brain to life. Lots of references, lots of crucial examples. Checking those examples out and thinking through them brought me closer to understanding my own thought processes, and of course, my brain.

If there are only 2 books you could afford to buy and read, make these 2 your better bets.

Absolutely mind altering!

You’ll never take your brain for granted after reading Pink and Friedman!

I’ve been saying it over and over: get back to basics when you design your website.

Sure, it’s interesting to have Flash and all the new bells and whistles and apps when you plan for a website but it’s not about you.

I often tell clients this. No offense but the website is not designed for YOU.

Clients usually are taken aback with this statement.

They’re mystified.

Yes, my job is to design your website so that your website meets your clients’ needs. This is a reminder that needs to be hammered into people’s heads.

Because your website is NOT your toy. Repeat after me, your website is NOT your toy.

This means it’s not for your entertainment. It’s not for you to enjoy.

It’s to help you communicate with your customers better.

This reminds me of 2 important things which I want to tell you about.

One is Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae, a new book that’s out now. If you know me, you know I am a big fan of Seth’s books. Seth is a brilliant marketer. He also speaks commonsense. He captures it perfectly by asking: is your marketing out of sync?

The title itself tells a story. Isn’t it gross to have sundae on top of meatballs? One is sweet, the other savoury. So both don’t gel. Not at all. If there’s only one thing you can take away from Seth’s book, it’s this: “understand that you don’t get to decide what the market demands. The market does.”

Do go and read the rest of Seth’s insightful stuff. You can also download some sample chapters. (Smart marketing. Like an appetiser, you’d want more after you read the first few chapters. That’s why smart bookstores let you read their unwrapped books because they KNOW you will buy the book, if not now, then later. Sooner or later.)

Besides Seth’s book (which I will probably buy), the other is of course Jakob Nielsen. This man speaks lots of commonsense, tempered with research results. In his latest finding, he says that Web2.0 can be dangerous.

Both Seth and Jakob are actually talking about the same thing if you read closely. They’re saying, use what you need. Not use the latest bling bling because it’s there and you need to look fashionable.

Sure, new bling bling can make you so ubercool. If you’ve been on Facebook, you can find a slew of new apps.

At first they’re exciting toys. But like all toys, their attractiveness fizzles out after a while. And we wait for the next app to come along and dazzle us for the next 5 minutes.

Web2.0, well, they’re not bad, says Nielsen, and I agree with that.

They just complicate matters with their complexity. And draw your customers away from what they’re there for.

The crux is: it’s best to stick to simple designs because simple designs work best. (Hear ye, hear ye). Which brings me to a conversation I had with a client recently - he asked why he couldn’t have flying objects on his website. Flying objects may be cute but they lose their appeal after the 2nd visit. And then what? What is the purpose of the objects that zoom about?

Everything has its function and place on a website. Items are not placed arbitrarily on a website, at least on websites which we design for clients. We don’t do something because it’s cute.

We ask ourselves: does this fulfill a function? Is it useful? Is it going to frustrate our client’s clients when they reach the website? If it is not going to do anything except look cute, why put it there?

Basically, go back to basics if you want to design a website which makes your clients happy. Happy means not confusing them. Happy means not making them search all over your website to find one phone number or one piece of information.

That’s what real web design is about.

Usability and accessibility.

And don’t make meatball sundaes either.

To your regular sundae success,
Nic

UPDATE: Download and read Seth’s free PDF called MisMatch (Riffs on Meatball Sundae) from ChangeThis. Love this site. If you want thought-provokers, this site has “manifestos” you can read to your heart’s delight!

It’s always good to be reminded once in a while particularly when we get so caught up in our blogging and forget the goals a bit.

Bloggers blog but bloggers also read other blogs. And bloggers tend to subscribe to too MANY blogs. It could stem from not wanting to miss out on anything important or earth-shattering. Or just plain ‘kiasu’ lah. Not wanting to miss out on any information.

But we often forget that we don’t have all the time in the world to read all the blogs we want. So we have to be selective and read ONLY the good ones.

After all, we need time for other important pursuits in life too. We can’t just spend all time in front of the PC (yes, we may be in the IT industry but we don’t encourage people to stay stuck in front of the PC all day).

So for 2008, it’s our resolution to remove ourselves and unsubscribe from blogs we don’t read.

On the flipside, if we’re bloggers, we want people to stick around and NOT unsubscribe. So how to make our blogs relevant and sticky?

Here are some blog-sticky tips according to Patrick Schaber.

Give readers something new. They should come away with a pleasure of having learnt something from your blog. Give them this pleasure! (This also means bloggers need to work harder to bring in quality content - content which needs to fulfill the aims of your blog.)

Post frequently. In my opinion, you should post frequently if you have good posts or information to share. If none, you can always blog about what you did and what you learnt because your readers can learn through what you learnt!

Maintain focus. This is a good one. It’s easy to stray from the topic of your blog because let’s face it, things get boring after a while. But do not give in to the temptation of wanting to write about other things. For instance, Krista’s soup blog focuses on Chinese soups only. Not Western soups. She says it’s tempting sometimes to talk about other types of soups but it’s also going to be detrimental to her blog readers.

Add visual interest. This is another good point. A lot of blog readers love photos and nothing speaks louder or better than photos. That’s why we use photos when we want to bring a point across. It’s best to make a photo or visual image relevant too.

Of course, it sums up to the fact that your blog must be useful. After all you are competing with a million trillion blogs out there. Treat your blog readers to something they can be happy with.

While on the subject of blogging, this year we want to give all our blog readers truly good stuff. If it isn’t good, we won’t put it here. More business tips, business ideas and lots of interesting stuff (we hope last year’s posts were interesting enough to draw you back again and again!). Also, lots of personality too.

Plus we’re upping the ante by including more book reviews especially business books we’ve read because I believe that we can learn so much from books, no matter how badly written some are. Yes, there are good books and there are also badly written books. Books which seem to have no substance at all.

We’d like to go the extent of putting up case studies (god knows we have a bunch of those waiting to be published and read) but sometimes, we have to be discreet.

We’d like to share more on web design and the creative process too because at the end of the day, it isn’t web design at all. A paradox? Not really. Web design is about communication. That’s the essence of web design really.

We’re actually very excited about this year because have we got plans in store.

Keep reading this blog and we’ll tell you more!

To success in 2008,
Nic