A recent study done by the Aberdeen Group shows that a slow loading website can lead to loss of traffic, customers, and ultimately: business. (Read the short news brief)

Aberdeen's study focuses on pages that take 5 seconds to load or longer, but the principle remains, people want fast. Millions of people are not paying for hi-speed internet just to download large files fast. In fact, many users aren't downloading files at all; they just want their web pages and email to download quickly.

Any delays longer than a second will actually interrupt a person's train of thought. If they get interrupted, then they will notice that your site is slow. (The fact that they notice may give them time to think to go elsewhere)

Last year, we as a web development company, decided to move all of our clients sites to a new, faster hosting company. The cost was more than twice as much, but the increase of speed was well worth it.

If you have a slow loading website, consider upgrading, it's worth the money. (Contact us)

Check out: www.lodgingpropertiesgroup.com

I would like to say thank you to our client for their hard work, Mackenzie for designing it, and Jesse for coding it!

This blog is clearly, and completely about the iPhone. So let me preface this blog by saying: I don't own one, and I personally don't have the slightest desire to use one.

Now that's off my chest, here we go...

Someone asked me last night what the latest exciting new technology that is on the horizon. I admitted that right now is a fairly boring time to be in technology because there are not any huge technology break-throughs happening right now.

In the mid-ninties there were new products coming out left and right: computers at home, scanners, color printers, and endless other products we take for granted (the mouse and desktop speakers).

In the late nineties, it was all about the internet.

Early 2000s, video games really took off, and high-speed internet ruled the landscape.

A few years ago wifi and finally internet on the cell phones capitvated the scene. (Enter, stage right: blackberry)

Now what we have, is one single device that does all the above: The iPhone.

Here are the 3 things the iPhone did for the technology world:

1. Useful Integration: Never before had we seen a useful device that had GPS, Camera, Touch Screen, wifi, cellular communication, PDA, endless amounts of bells and whistles that actually did something.


2. Raised the bar: All other cell phones will now have to include all the above, just to compete. (With the exception of the disposable pay-as-you-go phones marketed to organized crime)


3. User-centric: From the ground up, this was built for the user in mind. We dreamed of being able to surf the web on our cell phone in 1999, but we had no need for it. The need has never been stronger and people are gladly paying for it.

Many critics in 1999 thought email on a cell phone was just unnecessary, which BlackBerry quickly proved wrong (CrackBerry!). What they didn't do was make the web browsing experience as good as the email experience. THAT is why the iPhone was a movement. They didn't forget anything.

Technology will continue to be a progression of those 3 attributes above. Do you doubt the necessity of your refrigerator being on the internet, wait for someone to apply those principles, and you wont imagine life without it.

Before you launch your website and start advertising, make sure that you ALWAYS make it easy to allow someone to contact you. Nobody likes a Contact page that requires 50 questions to be filled out just to reach a human.

Don't beat around the bush with a bunch of dropdowns, like:
What method of communication do you prefer? (Email, Phone, Snail Mail)
What day of the week is best for you? (Sunday-Saturday listed)
What time of day is best to reach you? (Morning, Afternoon, Evening)

Instead, ask them directly what you want.
Here's a great example of what you should ask:
When and how would you like to be contacted?

Then leave room for them to say "Call me after 5pm", "Email me", or "Mail me a membership packet".

Let them just tell you what they want, and the both of you will be happy.

One of my biggest pet peeves in business is when communication is made without my permission. Now, first off, Permission Marketing is a concept that has been widely developed and evangelized by Seth Godin. It basically states that your most effective communication in business happens after your customer (or potential customer) has given you permission to market to them.

One example of this is when a user signs up for a newsletter. They have given that company permission to send them material.

Now, I do a LOT of business online. I email companies about products, prices, service terms, etc. I love to handle it over the web. It allows me to communicate when its most convenient for me, and in turn, they can respond when its most convenient for them. (Its a win-win)

Here's my pet peeve: When I go onto a website and submit a form asking for them to contact me, and they CALL me back! (Especially if I selected the "Email" option from their dropdown asking what is the best method to contact me) If I really wanted to TALK to someone, wouldn't I just call their toll free number? The same thing can happen when I email a vendor asking a question, and they call me right away.

People think that any contact is permission, but its not. I now have to make sure I put in a fake phone number if I want to make sure to not get called.

Are you responding with Permission?


Check out Seth's book, I highly recommend his material:

Recently I found myself trying to sign up for a gym membership. I thought this would be fairly simple and straight forward: Membership Fee & a per month fee. Simple enough, right?

Well, what I found was this:

• Down payment JUST to join a 14-month waiting list.


• Fairly high membership fee


• Per month after that.


• Deposit to use the "Sister club" while on the waiting list


• Per month fee to use the sister club.

This went on for over 20 emails and a couple phone calls, over 5 days. There were built-in loopholes to get around the waiting list, and high membership fee, but none of them seemed to apply to me. (This was just as confusing as the I.R.S. tax code!)

All which led me to call an entirely different club, who had the pricing structure that I expected. One quick phone call, a 10 minute visit to sign papers, and I was done.

No catches, no hidden fees, no complicated pricing. In fact they gave me 2 months free!

A complicated price structure is a turn off. It leaves the customer confused and feeling like there are hidden fees for everything.

In the past couple of years, I've learned that some software really costs 4 or 5 times more than the price on the box. You see, what the price tag doesn't account for is the time it takes to perform some of the basic tasks that come with purchasing software. Those tasks include installing, updating, importing data, and registering.

Two of the biggest offenders in this category are QuickBooks and Adobe Products (namely Acrobat Professional). Both of these products can easily be installed for the first time by an average user. There would be no data to import, updates would go fairly smoothly, and registration would probably be a snap. So far, so good.

The customer uses these applications without many problems for a year or more, UNTIL...they get hit with a virus, need a new hard drive, or maybe just upgraded their computer.

Now what they have is the task of setting up their software all over again. Sound easy? Think again.

Installing new and running updates, no problem. Importing data, not that hard. Registering the software, PAINFUL!

First they will make you call their registration support number. That person will ask for all the usual information and then ask you for the registration codes. Then they will ask you for the information you filled out on the registration form months (maybe years) ago! If you don't remember any of these items, then they go to plan B, faxing your receipt.

Now, who has this receipt handy for their QuickBooks 2005 purchase? Anyone? Anyone? (Bueller...?)

Exactly, so instead of faxing your receipt, you resort to communicating with more passion in your voice. This actually helps. The more upset you get with them, the more they are willing to help. Technically they're not allowed to hang up on you, so you do have the freedom to make this move. I've actually been on the phone with Adobe for 4 hours at one sitting, because they wouldn't hang up, nor would they issue me a new registration code. After 4 hours, they gave in.

Intuit is notorious for FORCING me to do one of 2 things: Scream from the very first "Hello" prompt, or lie. The latter tends to get you out the door faster, but sometimes the ex-FBI-turned-Registration-Code-Validator-Guy catches on, which then takes you back to option 1, audible force.

When a client hires us to walk through this registration process (and sometimes with the current version), it doubles the cost that they paid for the software. If they don't have us do it, then it equates to 2+ hours of THEIR time focused on something other than making money. Either way, Intuit and Adobe communicates to their customers that Legal software is more important than happy customers.

In the spirit of the season, I'm encouraging everyone to cast their vote for the November 4th election.

Also, to save time, everyone should sign up to vote absentee, recently renamed in California to "Vote-By-Mail Voting" (Can we say "redundant"?).

I've just finished filling out my ballot and will proudly deliver it to the post office in the morning. I know many disagree, but personally I can't wait until we can vote online! I also can't wait for my mailbox to not be filled with election material.

California residents can go here for a Vote-by-mail ballot application.[pdf]
If you are outside California, you can find more info here.

Many people have asked me lately why I don't have an "auto-signature" on my email. They mostly ask me after I email them and then they have to email me back just to get my phone number. Well, I don't have one on purpose, and here are my reasons:

• There's not enough time in the day to TALK to all my customers. I wish there was, but there isn't. So I must encourage my customers to email me. I can have 10 customers email me all at the same time, and we can communicate accordingly, but I cannot be on the phone with 10 people at the same time. (The same principle applies for my business address)


• People really don't need to be reminded what the name of my company is, or my title. If they want to know my company, they will see it in my email address. If they want to know my title, then they can ask. (Why would anyone want to know my title? So they can see how much of a nerd I really am?)


• TagLines really don't make things better. Some company's sign off all emails with "Respectfully", "Fanatically Yours", or "Your ___ Specialists, for life!". People stop reading it after the first time, not to mention how annoying it is to see "Fanatically Yours" after you've just sent an emailing complaining about their poor service.


• People stop paying attention to it after the first couple of times.

The last point is the most important. People stop noticing it. Its lost meaning. So why are you doing it?

I figured since this was our first blog it would be appropriate to have a quick tidbit of knowledge about blogs. The word blog actually comes from the word "weblog". First used around December 1997, almost a decade later most people still dont know what a blog is or what it stands for.

My personal choice of definitions for a blog is simply this: Online (mostly public) journal.