Brandon Darling

Get your pen and pencil out and take some notes.  If you manage, own, operate, or otherwise write your meal ticket in business, then you’re LOSING business because of your website.

Then again, you might be Google - and you’re printing money with your website.

But if your not Google, your website is surely turning away more business than it’s bringing to you.  And the worst part is, you don’t even know it.

Take everything you’ve ever heard about websites, online marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), linking, tracking, pay-per-click, and forget about it.  It doesn’t matter to you.  You’re running a business - providing a service, making a widget, selling schwag.  The question you should be asking of your website is “what have you done for me lately?”

Blogs are generally useless (for your business).  Portals are even worse.  And if you have a website that hasn’t been updated in the last week, then you’re irrelevant.  Your 10 year old website is an eyesore on the web and people - perhaps potential customers - are looking at that slovenly mess online and hitting the back button fast than you can say AOL.

Think your ecommerce site is an asset?  Wrong.  Sure, you convert 10 sales per month.  How many are you losing?  Probably 10 times that.  Why?  You’re website is old, probably hard to use.  It probably is set in a color scheme someone hates.  You likely have misspellings and grammar errors.  You probably had your brother’s friend’s uncle’s shuffleboard partner who “knows computers” build your website.  You spent $300 and you patted yourself on the back.

You are an idiot.

What’s the answer?  Online guerrilla warfare.  How many people visit your site and leave?  Did you get their information?  Do you know why they left?  Do you know where they went?  Do you know how they found you?  What words they searched on when they hit your site?  What sites they were on before you?

You can obtain all this information.

Then you have to act.

The fact is that you’re lazy.  I’m lazy.  People are lazy.  This is not because we are bad, or because of Original Sin.  The Universe tends toward entropy.  Things are cooling off, slowing down.  So it’s easy to drink that koolaid and become nothing but a pundit of the status quo.  Of course, some young punk driving a car that costs more than your house is right on your heels and about ready to eat you and most of your suppliers for lunch.

You are not invicible.

To that end, you need tenacious, covert, and intelligent online help.  You need me.  Face it - no one else is going to tell you the truth.  Sales guys want to be your friend and lie to you all day long.  You want to hear those lies, because they make you feel good.  They make you feel successful and important.  You feel like you’re worth more than that kid trying to sell you something because he kisses your ass so well.  The fact is, he’s worth more than you because he has drive and passion.  He’s hungry for more than cheetos and doughnuts.  He wants your money and he largely gets it.

The deal is your revenue flow is never guaranteed, and about the time you get comfortable is about the time you start losing money.

Back to your website - you have no idea how many people are turned OFF by your site.  The truth is that it’s better to have NO online identity than a bad one.

I open this for discussion:

Should a small business (under 20 users) opt for their own infrastructure: that is, servers, domain controllers, file sharing, Windows SBS, Exchange, Outlook -

OR

Should they buy $300 machines, run Linux, and use Google Apps?

Can Google Apps effectively replace all the email, file sharing, collaboration, shared calendaring, and other basic business needs?  There are even online time-tracking and accounting applications.

Is the world of the business network dead?  Will Software as a Service replace IT architecture?

Your comments are needed.

When it comes to technology, there is no such thing as knowing everything, there is only knowing that which you do not know.

While trying to explain the role of IT consultants to a client, I came up with this analogy:

The relationship of business and Information Technology is like an orchestra: there are three major components: players, instruments, and sheet music.

The players (or musicians) represent the employees of a company (users).  The instruments represent hardware (computers, printers, fax machines).  The sheet music represents software (Word, Excel, Quickbooks).

Put a bunch of musicians in a room with instruments and sheet music and you might get something that sounds okay - you may also get something horrid.  Or you may wind up with something inspired but disorganized, like jazz.

The word orchestra is defined as “a group of players that accompanies action.”  If you want your employees to be able to use technology to take *action* then you need the final, and required, component of an orchestra - the conductor.

A conductor is an interesting person.  While the real performance is going on, that is, while the orchestra is performing for an audience, he is simply flaying his arms like a madman.

In some sense, a consultant does the same thing.  While the business is humming along getting things done, it appears to any casual observer that the consultant is doing little or nothing.

If you watch an orchestra, or any performance, what you *don’t* see is all the “behind the scenes” work - rehearsals, research, practice, and study.

The consultant spends countless unseen hours training, refining, practicing, solving problems, and truly *learning* their craft.  A consultant can come into your business and reduce your problem to a paragraph or a sentence - maybe a single word.

You - as a business owner - think that your business is more complicated.  You think you’re unlike anyone else, and that unless someone has spent the blood, sweat, and tears that you have building your business, no one can understand you.

Get over yourself.

You’re too close to your own business to know what’s good for you.  Someone can summarize your problems, process, or your years of experience in a flash.  Your business is not unique.

Getting back to the orchestra - if you want your business to run well, if you want freedom from problems and “poor performance,” you need a good conductor.

While you might think that your business/technology consultant is wildly flayling his arms like a conductor, realize that he has spent thousands of hours rehearsing and studying.  He’s trying to get your people, your hardware, and your software to make music for your business.  And he can do it better than you can.

As a business owner/manager, your are a spectator of the great orchestra of business.  You pay the bucks to support the orchestra, and you reap the pleasures of hearing great music.  You do not, however, possess the skills of the conductor.  To you, he gets in the way of the music (only visually) but without the conductor you would have no music - only chaos.