5 Website Mistakes That May Harm Your Small Business

My latest article on the WebSolutionZ blog: 

We've been in the digital business for over 15 years, and often get asked to critique existing websites as part of planning for an overhaul. 

Frankly, the ways a digital presence can actually make life more difficult for a business, rather than improve it, are many and varied! 

Here are 5 things we see most commonly: 

https://www.websolutionz.com.au/blog/5-website-mistakes-that-may-harm-your-small-business

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Durolane day

Yesterday afternoon I had my annual Durolane injection. 

A few years ago, I learned I have a 2cm section of cartilage inside my left patella missing after years of netball, so when I bend my knee it's a rather painful bone-on-bone experience.

Durolane is like a poly filler for joints. I found out yesterday there are new brands out now too and it's getting cheaper to do, which I'll look into for next year because my insurance company has randomly decided to stop covering it.

It's not the most comfortable thing to get done even with a local anaesthetic (think big needle behind kneecap 😱), but for a year of no pain it's worth it.

This morning it's not noticeably puffy, and only a bit red from the heat pack. But it hurts like #$*@&%!, can barely put weight on. Expecting to come good again tomorrow. 👍

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Joomla Community Magazine interview

Recently I was interviewed by the Joomla Community Magazine for the February 2021 issue.

https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/february-2021/meet-a-joomler-nicky-veitch

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My take on the #facebooknewsban on #FacebookAustralia today

1. Facebook are big bullies and horrible data miners and everyone agrees they shouldn't do that, but most people know they do it and keep giving them data anyway. And governments everywhere let them.
   
   
2. Last night a media bargaining code was passed in the AU parliament and EVERY party voted for it, thus demonstrating that they're all idiots and it's political but not just restricted to one party.
   
   
3. The legislation is faulty because if you are in government and you've previously pushed "let the market decide", then you shouldn't also decide to legislate against something the market has decided, ie. that Google and Facebook are where people choose to spend their money on ads, and not in media classifieds like they used to pre-internet.
   
   
4. The Australian media and Murdoch are complicit in all this. They have been championing the media code all over social media because they had $ in their eyes. Yes, a healthy media is important to democracy, and yes, they are broke, but that's because the world has changed with the internet and they haven't yet found the magic bullet to make money.
   
   
5. Google and Facebook aren't actually stealing anything. They are sharing links. This is the underlying foundation of the whole internet as designed decades ago. Tim Berners-Lee, who created the WWW, has already criticised the media code for potentially breaking the internet.
   
   
6. Facebook have today taken a sledgehammer approach to Australia. It is traumatic to many and I get that. But if I was them, my thinking would be - small country, less than 1% of the global population, trying to throw their weight around. Let's slam a giant block on EVERYTHING today and create as much outrage as possible. When they start to see sense, let's negotiate. Classic negotiation tactic, if you're into that kind of thing.
   
   
7. If the government had decided to use the bloody tax system we already have in place as it was intended, and if the social media companies didn't actively practice government-approved tax avoidance, the financial situation could have been handled by the tax system, maybe set up a new class for them or something, and then something set up to fund media. But nooo....

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Companies on Social Media: 6 Types of User Interactions with Business

Interesting, via Nielsen Norman Group:

Summary: Users rely on social media to find out about new products or companies, conduct research, engage with content, make purchases, and seek customer support.

As part of our social-media research, we identified 6 types of interactions that users have with companies on social media. Our findings are based on data from 23 participants: a diary study with 14 participants and a usability study followed by cognitive mapping with 9 participants.  We identified the following core interactions, which are listed in an approximate order, even though they don’t always happen in this sequence:

1. Discover: Can I find something interesting?
2. Research: What is this? How does it work for me? How could I use it?
3. Engage: Am I interested in the content the company posts on social media?
4. Purchase: How can I buy it?
5. Support: Can you help me solve a problem?
6. Promote: How can I share my experience with others?

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/companies-social-media/

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Email spam

"I'm going to be honest with you, David - you're not off to the best start..."

One of the downsides of a website contact page is that you can't block individual spammers because the From: email address is your own website.

About the only thing that can make you feel OK about spam is receiving something this funny

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