On Internet Business

Don’t trust a website designer to build your website

Posted by Michael under Business Growth

Spot the fatal mistake on this website?

Got it?

Answer: Every page has the same URL.

As any internet marketing person will tell you this is a lethal mistake for the following reasons:

·        Search engines will see the entire website as a single page. This reduces the amount of visitors that will find the site as the numerous pages of content are invisible to the search engines.

·        Deep Linking Other websites are not able to link to relevant pages within the site. Links to the site increase the “trust” search engines have in the site and push it up in the listings. This site has no deep links 

·        User Experience. The quality content is difficult to find from within the site and is impossible to find from outside the site (through the search engines).

The example I have given is the website of a top London Art gallery. I have few complaints about the site design but in its existing state it will never get many visitors.

There is more to website design than website design.

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Time Management – How to be more effective

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Leadership

A very useful time management tool I have come across is the Covey grid.

We often spend our time doing things that are urgent in our lives, but if we can organise our tasks according to their importance then we increase our effectiveness by focusing on the right issues.

Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People describes the Covey grid as a framework for sorting out your tasks on the basis of priority in order to achieve your long-term goals.

The Covey grid is a 2 X 2 matrix that classifies tasks as urgent and non-urgent on one axis, and important or non-important on the other axis..

The importance-urgency grid refines the process of prioritising tasks by clearly distinguishing between importance and urgency. It displays where you need to spend most of your energies and helps you stop doing things that are neither important nor urgent.

Fig. Covey Grid

According to Dr. Covey, “if you do pay homage to the most important things in your life, as you’ve identified them, you begin to find ways to fit everything.” However to get efficient results you will need long-term planning and  practice.

Dr. Stephen R. Covey is the Co-founder and vice chairman of FranklinCovey, the leading global professional services firm with offices in 123 countries. He is an internationally respected family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and author. His book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was named as # 1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century.

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Warren Rustand on the Obligations of a Leader

Posted by Michael under Leadership

On May 9th 2009 It was my privilege to hear Warren Rustand speak on “The Obligations of a Leader” at the Entrepreneurs Organization Global Leadership Conference in New Orleans.

 Warren Rustand is a hugely successful CEO. Currently he is Managing Director of SC Capital Partners, an investment banking group offering corporate advisory services, a private equity fund, capital sourcing with a focus on the microcap market. He was previously the CEO of Summit Capital, a firm specialising in small to midsize company development. He has also been Chairman and CEO of Rural Metro Corporation and Cambridge Co. Ltd. He has served as Chairman/CEO of 17 companies. Warren Rustand was Appointments Secretary and Cabinet Secretary to President Ford.

 He spoke about the principles to guide us:

• sense of wonder – about who we are and where we are
• serendipity (good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries) and sagacity (the mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations) We need to appreciate our lives. . Luck is about chance meetings, chance opportunities and time to appreciate that luck. In his life Rustand took time to volunteer to work for Mother’s charity in Calcutta
• Uniqueness, equality and diversity. There is no one else with our DNA.. We are all unique and special human beings. We need to know that we are all equal and make sure we thank everyone who helps us in our daily lives, no matter how menial their role. Doing this It makes us better human beings. 

Warren Rustand typically plans to builds companies in 3 years.

Leaders need to:

• be cause driven
• be constantly learning
• have humor

“The most dangerous person is the person that has achieved a goal and doesn’t have a new goal”.

He spoke about “Becoming”. The examples he cited were

• Declaration of independence which created longest serving democracy in the world.
• Glenn Cunningham..When he was only eight years old, Glenn Cunningham’s physicians told him that he would never walk again after suffering from severe leg burns from a gasoline explosion. Despite this he went on to win an Olympic gold medal in 1936.

“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing”, Shakespeare. 

He spoke of moments of discovery – Stephen Covey.
• core beliefs and values.
• commitment to core beliefs and values.
• behavior based on core beliefs and values.

He gave the example of

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes  who once boarded a train, but then couldn’t locate his ticket. The conductor recognised the distinguished justice. “Your Honor,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I know you can be trusted. Get us the ticket when you find it later.” Justice Holmes looked up at the conductor and said:”Young man, the problem is not where is my ticket . . . but where am I going?”

Power of Leadership in EO

• leaders among leaders.
• stepping forward.
• energy of leadership

On the current economic problems . He felt the problems started in August 2007 and predicted 3-5 year for the situation to recover..

“Excess and greed will kill people”

Take ownership and experience from eo/glc
• I am responsible.
• This is my life and my time
• ownership influences others
• Agree support bond commitment

According to research by Martin Seligman, 7 out of 10 people are happy. Despite incredible poverty the majority of people describe themselves as happy. Whether we are rich or poor, people are generally happy.

Satisfaction is derived from the perspective of having done something well with opportunities that have presented themselves.

Key book – Leadership by John Gardner particularly page 81 and 82. Transactional leadership versus Transformational leadership – Transformational leaders transform through noble thoughts that elevate the people around them.

The heroes journey:

• losing oneself in a relationship
• losing oneself in gratitude and generosity (with all including those that serve us)
• compare down not up

Be philanthropic /volunteer

• suppress negative commentary
• know thyself
• discover a belief in the transcendental

Our cause entrepreneurship. We are EO, We will lead.

“There is nothing worthwhile in life that is achieved without enthusiasm” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our challenge is to learn and teach.

Once gone 4 things never come back

• sped arrow
• spoken word
• wasted second
• neglected opportunity

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What is WolframAlpha?

Posted by Michael under Search

WolframAlpha is an innovative step to make all logical knowledge immediately computable and accessible by everyone.

Since the beginning of the computer age, people presumed that a computer could answer any factual question. But that has not been the case. Computers can do things that are beyond human capability but up until now they could not answer questions. British physicist, Stephen Wolfram has developed a system called WolframAlpha that is designed to change this.  

The idea behind its development was to create a platform that can compute whatever can be computed about anything!  

Unlike Google, WolframAlpha is a search engine that filters information and data stored in its own vast databases to answer specific search queries. The aim is to return a single search result with the right answer, rather than a list of thousands of web pages which may or may not contain the information requested, as is the case with other search engines like Google. 

WolframAlpha is one step ahead of google in providing a powerful resource tool for academia. Currently, WolframAlpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains and is a result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research.  

Where Google may be a very helpful Librarian, WolframAlpha is the genius kid in the class that always knows the right answer and is happy to share that information with everyone.

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Attention to detail matters

Posted by Michael under Email Marketing, Online Retail

1.   I didnt use the services provided by trainline.com.  Instead I emailed them to tell them their website didnt work.  So why are they delighted?

2.   “Woiuld” shouldnt that be “would”. With thousands of these emails going out wouldn’t it be worthwhile to use a spellcheck.

It is interesting to read an article in last weekends Sunday Times about other problems experienced by Trainline customer’s 

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