Yesterday I got slightly distracted. Browsing around YouTube, I found some videos analysing the news media footage of 9/11. They broke down it down piece by piece to show that the planes were actually computer animations and that the news media had used blue screen effects to cover up missiles striking the buildings. Which, of course, had been ordered by the US Government to justify the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq.

Honestly, their analysis was pretty convincing but there was always one question left in my mind: If the US Government was really prepared to kill their own people to justify their war, why wouldn’t they just fly their own plane into the towers instead? Why bother involving the news media at all? Digging deeper, I ’surprisingly’ found websites debunking the “missing plane” theories and presenting much more plausible evidence.

I think the conspiracy theories raise some interesting questions that are being ignored by the news media and US Government investigations. But the point was how scary the world we live in can be. Who do we trust?

When I was a child, I remember thinking my parents knew it all. Obviously, grown ups in general must have a pretty good handle on things and give good advice. As I got older and became able to investigate more ideas for myself, my perspective changed a lot. You realise that your parents might not know as much as you thought, and that maybe they’re just as scared and lost as you feel yourself sometimes.

When you reach this kind of awareness, it can be scary or it can be exciting. I think we all make this decision within ourselves based on our own comfort zones and how much ‘risk’ we are willing to expose ourselves too. After all, if the people you’ve had guiding your life for so long turn out to not know it all, who do you turn to? Who do you trust?

I think we make an important decision at this point and the people that come out on top in this world decide to trust the only person they can, themselves. That doesn’t mean that we don’t listen to other people and take their advice, but we have to ask ourselves if this advice is truly in our best interests and not just blindly follow along.

At University, I just wasn’t feeling right about the whole situation. I’d chosen to study computers because the starting salaries were great and the industry had a great future. Plus, I’d always been interested in tinkering with computers. The only problem was I hated my degree. I enjoyed some parts that had management aspects but it wasn’t enough. When I saw other people programming with their eyes closed and I struggled with it all, I knew it wasn’t for me…but what was?

That’s when ‘fate’ lead me to the answer, a book on a bedside table where I was house-sitting called “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investment.” I devoured it, realised my true passion lay in entrepreneurship and building businesses, and never looked back. Getting a job was no longer an option for me, despite going against what most people believed was the right path.

Seven years later, I’m still on the same path even though I’ve had some detours. I haven’t succeeded in changing the world with my business yet, but I feel like I get closer every day. I know I am doing the right thing, I know I am helping people, and I know I will change millions of lives one day. Because I trust myself.

I had a similar experience in my relationship a few years later. After five years together, the last one and a half years being a painful long distance relationship where my girlfriend lived on the opposite side of the globe, she finally returned and broke up with me. Of course, this was a little devastating to my plans of marriage and babies so it was an interesting time. But on reflection, I decided to find out why this had happened.

After all, I was a nice, considerate guy who would do anything for her. And that, I discovered, was the problem. So I went back to the books and started to realise what I’d been doing wrong, and how to fix it. Now, my love life is pretty sorted, and I’m much happier for it. All by identifying what I wasn’t happy about and making an effort to change it.

When researching, there was a lot of information and advice given. Through experimentation and analysis, I decided for myself what really worked and what I wanted to apply to my life. There were some critical sources that I trusted but at the end of the day, I trusted myself. Because I knew that was the only person I could really trust.

I bring up these experiences in my life because we all face a similar problem. In our relationships, in our businesses, and in our lives. Who can we trust?

When you are looking to improve your business and website you to ask yourself who you can trust. And at the end of the day, the answer will be yourself. You need to be responsible for filtering out the sales and marketing crap that is thrown at you and make good decisions. You need to take responsibility for understanding what you are being taught and if it makes sense to you.

Too many people hide their heads in the sand. When something goes wrong, they are quick to blame everyone and everything apart from themselves. If you don’t get the outcomes you want in your life, it’s your fault, end of story.

You’re the person who didn’t take the time to learn. You’re the person who didn’t take action. You’re the person who let fear of failure or success or clowns hold you back. You’re the one who decides if you are going to be happy or not. Not your spouse, not your children, not your parents, and certainly not the latest salesperson offering you instant riches.

It’s time to take responsibility for your life, your business, and your results.

I believe I have a lot of good information to share with you. I believe I can give you the tools to make a difference with your website. But it all comes back to you. If you don’t believe it, call bullshit. If you do, then hang around and let’s try to do some great things together.

And feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments.

One of my regular readers commented that the posts recently have been “a bit angry.” Well I didn’t mean them to seem angry at all actually. But to balance that perception, here is a few thoughts on life and business from yours truly.

1. Trying to fit in only leads to mediocrity.
2. Everything happens for a reason, so always look for the reason.
3. Life is only hard if you’re not doing what you need to do to get what you want.
4. Always think positive, but don’t ignore the warning signs.
5. Learning is the second most powerful thing you can do, taking action is number one.
6. Life will always test you to see how much you want success, so show it.
7. Always put more faith in yourself than others do.
8. Ignore the cynics, the doubters, and the complainers. What have they ever achieved?
9. Every challenge can be overcome with time, effort, and knowledge.
10. The goal won’t make you happy, the journey should.
11. You learn far more by failing than being successful.
12. Dream big, but when you wake up, live big as well.

Anyone else have their own they’d like to share?

Well blood isn’t actually on offer (although for the right price I’ll consider it) but I still want to know what you want from this blog. In fact, I want to know what you want from a business blog, in particular a blog about improving your business website.

You see, I watch my RSS subscribers go up and down on a daily basis. Yes, I said down. That means that when I gain a few subscribers, I also seem to lose a few subscribers. This I don’t like one bit and it obviously means I’m not giving you what you want and expect.

So what is it that you want and expect?

My goals are to teach you how to improve your website and to make it enjoyable. So how am I doing? Should I have different goals? Grade me, leave a comment, drop me an email (c r a i g at c o n n e x t e d dot c o m). Whatever works for you.

Because I can’t improve unless I know what you want. And the only way I can find that out is by asking.

So I asked, let’s see if anyone out there is willing to reply…

I was reading Bill Bryson’s book Made in America the other day and stumbled upon something interesting. One of the chapters was about the development of advertising and showed a page full of tiny ads. For example:

I will make you a Human Gorilla
At home - In 5 days - No exercises

Emotional copy about being a small weakling that gets beaten up on the beach…yada yada yada…

Send now for amazing free book!

And this of course is followed by a form for your name and address to receive your free book. Does this format sound slightly familiar to anyone? Does it remind anyone of a free ebook offer you might find on a website? Put your name and email address here to receive xyz, called a squeeze page.

Why would this make you a slow Internet Marketer? Because the ad I’m quoting was written around 1920-30…and it wasn’t unique. So basically, we’re now using techniques on the Internet that were being used 80+ years ago in print advertising.

Now I’m not saying squeeze pages don’t work, I use them myself, but it got me thinking about where Internet Marketing is going in the future. The email opt-in is almost dead now, with the constant flood of email we receive, so where do we go next?

It just proves that Internet Marketing is really taking its baby steps now and as both technology and user behavior develops in this new age, the possibilities are amazing. I think it’s time to stop mucking around with your small business website and start getting serious before another opportunity goes flying by.

Getting someones attention is hard these days. Just keeping up with friends that live in the same city is difficult, let alone the ones all over the world. If we didn’t have Facebook I’d be screwed!

So the trick is once you have their attention to lock them in. Make sure they can’t leave without knowing more. My friend Mary (who I make fun of because I know she’s reading this) has been a great example of this over the last few months.

By having ‘guy dramas’ in her life, she had me completely locked in. We were seeing each other at least once a week to get the latest stories and debate the next course of action. But now the guy dramas have finished and my own dramas have taken precedence again.

Luckily she’s a lovely person so she doesn’t always have to resort to drama to get us to hang out…because no one likes a drama queen.

So how does this relate to your website? Make it gripping, make it fascinating, and tell a great story to keep visitors hooked.

Why

I really don’t think I need to point out why you should have interesting content on your website that keeps peoples attention. I’m sure we all realise that…but are we doing it?

How

The easiest way is to make sure there’s always something to come back for. Promises of more great content and a consistency around your distribution can help that. You should think about this as you create content. If you create X, what is the logical Y that people would come back for.

I’ve done this with my 7 Steps for Website Success. It was pretty obvious that more steps were coming and so people were actively checking the Members Only Area for it. (BTW I’ve finally finished them all! On to the next project mwhuaa.)

I’m now attempting the same thing with my blog posts. By logically ordering them and making that clear with the numbering I’m trying to show that there’s more useful content coming. I also try to do one every day so you know it’s here to read.

So what content can you use to suck visitors in and release it in just the right fashion to make visitors come back for more. And do you have enough quality content on your website so visitors are already browsing for hours when they first arrive?

Homework

Assess how much content you have on your website…it’s not enough. Make a commitment to create new, relevant content for your visitors as often as possible. And make sure it’s gripping enough to come back for juicy seconds.

It amazes me how many small businesses never bother to plan or work out where their business is going. But then I see the results of those businesses and it all becomes clear.

If you don’t have a strategy for your website and business, you’re literally going nowhere. The people that have an idea in their heads of what they want to achieve and how they’ll do it are moving in the right direction. The ones that actually bother to write it down blow everyone out of the water.

These are what success stories are made of!

Why

We all know most small businesses fail. We’ve seen the statistics and don’t want to become one. Well if you look at the reasons for failure, most of them can be tied to poor planning and management. What does that mean? They didn’t have a strategy to be successful.

Having a strategy isn’t about being successful anymore, it’s about surviving! It just so happens that having a strategy also makes for hugely successful businesses. Not a bad benefit, eh?

How

Planning doesn’t have to be the complicated techniques laid out in business books. It can be quite simple, but it still takes a little bit of thought and effort. I’m sorry, but Santa still hasn’t trained the elves how to do all your planning for you, along with make your products and services…you still need a little involvement in your business.

But all you need to plan is two things:

1. A goal
2. A plan to reach that goal

At the end of the day, it’s not that tricky! Work out where you want to go and how you’ll get there…surprisingly simple isn’t it?

Homework

Write down your goals and actions you’ll take to get there. For a more comprehensive idea of what to do, check out the new article in the Free Members Only Section: Action without Strategy wears out the Hamster.

The most important thing is to just do something, anything, that will contribute to building your website.

It always amazes me how many people don’t measure their website statistics. Even those that do have statistics programs in place never look at them. As they say, you can’t improve it if you can’t measure it. I’m never sure exactly who ‘they’ are…but they seem smart…

So measure it!

Why

Measurement allows you to work out where you can start improving. Right now, you probably don’t know how many visitors you have a day or how many of them are buying from you because of your website.

Doesn’t that sound like important information to have? “YES” I hear you cry! Good kids!

Seriously, measuring your website is easy as pie. It’s a lot easier than half the things you should be measuring in your business. Maybe even than 77.3% of the things you should be measuring.

It’s also interesting because most people in small business forums are asking how they get more website traffic. Well, if you’re not measuring all the different aspects of your website, how do you know where the problem lies? Sometimes it’s not in the traffic, it’s in the message your website delivers.

So no more excuses, let’s get measuring…

How

My favourite way to measure things is the free one. Thanks to some great free tools out there you can now measure your website’s results without it costing you an arm and a leg. Which is usually a good thing as you’ll need those arms and legs to create your products or provide your service.

If I was you, I’d pop over to Google Analytics and install that. It gives you a wide range of measurements for your website that may open your eyes to some major problems. Some clients I’ve worked with have had hundreds of visitors a day that they didn’t even know about. So you can guess what happened when we changed a few things around…sales increased instantly.

Sales mean money, and money means more holidays in Spain, which is always a good thing.

You could also find out if your web developers already installed a statistics program that you can use. But I’d still install Google Analytics as well for the detail it gives you.

Homework

Nothing tricky, go and install Google Analytics. Wait a few hours and start exploring your website statistics. Then make a point of doing it on a regular basis to check the improvements you’re making.

It’s Friday and I don’t know about you, but this is when I usually look back and wonder what I achieved during the week. I check my nice little Action Plan and see what I managed to tick off each day.

While this is good and I know I’m making progress, sometimes the little things can get in the way of the big picture. So today I spent some time reanalysing my long term goals and planning for the future.

I think it’s important for all small business owners to do this, especially when it comes to your website. The website can often slip down the list of priorities as other ‘more urgent’ things spring up. My aim is to stop you mistreating your website like this and give it the attention it deserves.

Think of me as your significant other that harasses you because you just forgot our anniversary…again! Though it’s up to you whether you imagine me throwing plates at your head…

Why

Taking a step back and deciding where you want to take your website is an important first step in the improvement process. Without an idea of where you want to go, you’ll never reach it. Quite frankly, if you don’t know how important planning is we’re probably wasting our time here.

So let’s get to the real stuff.

How

Setting long term goals for your website isn’t the trickiest thing in the world. You just decide what you want to achieve with it in the future. Bear in mind, the more you want to achieve, the more effort you’ll have to put in. Which is really where I want your mind to be. Right now, your website is not living up to it’s potential.

When I plan I look at two areas: Objectives and Goals. Everyone seems to have a different method for planning, but here’s mine. I like to keep it nice and simple to ensure I’m not planning for the sake of planning.

First you come up with your objectives. These are in an unquantifiable form like make more sales, increase website traffic, etc.

Then I take those objectives and work out how they can be made into measurable goals. So in a years time I want to have x amount of sales and x amount of unique visitors a day.

So now I have my objectives and goals for the coming year. The next step is to fill in the steps it’ll take to get there. So I do my 6 month, 3 month, and 1 month goals.

The final step is to assign actions I will take to reach these goals. Again, I work back from a year and work out what I need to do, right back to the coming month. So now I have a list of the most important actions I will take each month.

I always plan more accurately in the short term and am a bit more vague in the long term. Those months will fill themselves in at the end of the month when I go through and plan out the next months actions in more detail.

The result is a Action Plan for the next month with the most important actions listed in priority. I realise these are the actions that will grow my business so they should always get the focus before the daily problems that tend to appear.

Make sure you’re getting closer to achieving your biggest priorities every day, before getting sidetracked with the latest emails or surfing the web. This is the way to growing a successful website and business.

Homework

Guess! Take some quiet time over the weekend and go through this planning process for the next year. Then on Monday, get started on your biggest priority of the month.

It’s here! Are you excited? I am…well a little.

Yes, I’ve finally finished my first little website help video. It’s nothing impressive like the StomperNet guys produce or anything. In fact, it’s dramatically unfancy but I hope the content helps you.

It talks about the biggest problems small business owners face with their websites and then presents my blueprint for a successful website.

There’s another one on the drawing board that will go a lot more in-depth but I just wanted to test the waters with this one and see what feedback I got. So please let me know what you think in the comments below.

The short version with lovely background music (~4mins):

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yWuMQUH6FpM[/youtube]

The long version with my voice over explaining it (~10mins):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnYO2YaFRAM[/youtube]

You can sign up for the next video here:
The Web Business Blunder

I talk a lot about getting your website right before trying to drive masses of traffic to it. But one of the problems when improving your website is knowing whether something is really an improvement.

Personally, I can take a small business website and instinctively know how to change the text to draw a visitor in. This is just something that comes with learning how to write good copy. But once you get to that point, how do you take it to the next level?

Remember how I always talk about the importance of measurement…well this area is no different. You can actually measure a webpages results and work out how well it is converting.

I’m not talking about just what sales copy converts visitors to customers, I’m talking about getting truly specific here. Let me explain.

Remember how each webpage has a purpose, a goal that you want the user to reach? Well that means, for every individual webpage, you can measure how many visitors reach that goal. And there’s even a free tool to test what webpage is better.

So go into your free Google adwords account and look at the “Website Optimiser” tool (more information here). This is one very powerful, and very unused tool from Google that your website can’t do without.

With it, you can change the content on a single page, and test what works better. You can change your homepage text to see which copy delivers your “Most Wanted Response (MWR)” from your visitor. You can change pictures, headlines, even complete layouts if you wish.

Can you see how this might be powerful? You can now test different variations until you find the one that keeps visitors on your website. And then test different variations of the best one, until your website is a conversion machine.

So go, have a play and see what you can come up with. Now you can really put your copy writing skills to the test! Good luck!