Quick W.I.T.S.

There are plenty of reasons a business might decide to design their own website, especially if they are a new or small business, and budget is a concern. There are any number of companies that say you can have a business website up and running for cheap, in just a couple of hours. One of these cheap, generic websites is definitely better than having nothing at all... at least to start with. However, it's important not to fall into the trap of thinking one of these low cost, cookie cutter, no frills sites is all your business will ever need. Here are 5 of the worst mistakes you can make for your business when building a DIY website: 1. Not User Friendly Business owners who are not web designers don't have a lot of experience with how people browse websites. As a result, a self-made website often ends up with a poor user interface that is clunky, difficult to navigate, and not intuitive. If your website is not easy to understand, or it's not easy to find what someone...

As I sit here writing this, it's nearly 10am on the first day of school. My wife is at the office of her new job. The kids are all packed off with their school supplies, all the last minute crises have been handled (missing money for the yearly agenda book, wet socks from an unexpectedly deep puddle), and the house is empty and silent. Over the last 2 months of summer break, I often thought about how hard it was to get work done with the house so full and the constant noise of life in progress. Now, in the silence and the stillness of a house with no one in it, all I can think about is how much I wish there was someone here to fill the silence. It's a necessary evil of running your own business that you are always busy, even when you're home. There is no such thing as "off duty," no matter how hard you try - paying work is far too important to pass up when you're still new and growing. Last week, if you would have asked me, I would have told you I could...

You don't hear these kinds of stories about big businesses often enough. When you do, they tend to stand out as a result. Check out this comment a customer of WestJet recently posted on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/westjet/posts/10155727144278552 I'll include the text as well, just in case the post disappears: " My WestJet story… This past Sunday my 16 year old daughter was flying home on her own from a week in BC visiting family. On her flight to Calgary she started to experience some pains and was not feeling well. When she landed she called me and was not doing very well, anxiety had kicked in and she wasn’t sure what to do. We had her find a WestJet agent to ask for help. She found someone who took her to a WestJet counter and Agent Mike got on the phone with me. Mike said that they were escorting her to get some medical assistance and that she would not be left alone. After a quick check over with and a phone call with the paramedic it was recommended...

Sometimes in business, little things lead to big things. A fire starts from the tiniest spark, but burns far hotter and brighter once ignited. When you collaborate with others, your ideas feed off each other in much the same way, growing, intensifying. The fires you start together can set the world ablaze in ways no lone ember ever could. The beautiful and terrible thing about ideas is that you never lose them, you only gain them. If I give you an idea, and you give me back an idea, we both have two ideas. Working together exponentially increases your maximum potential. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. If you have the chance to work with someone else in your field, it's probably worth your time. Who knows what you'll come up with together?

Modern consumers spend a lot of time on their phones. Research shows that 91% of mobile phone users say they search for local products online, and that 93% of them do research online before they decide to buy. With over 2 billion mobile phone users in the world, and the saturation growing ever closer to 100% in developed countries, that's an enormous audience expecting to find what they're looking for online. And it's an enormous opportunity for small and growing businesses to capitalize on if they're already available online, ready to market to those consumers in the micro-moment. What the heck is a micro-moment? The term "micro-moment" was first coined by Google in 2015. It refers to the moment when a person reaches for their phone in order to find out a piece of information. It may not even be with the express intent to make a purchase, it is just the first moment a user thinks about something they want to know, and picks up their phone to discover in...