Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2008, I salute you!
As we head towards the summer holidays and new horizons, I’d like to say this: if there were only one tip I could offer you for the future, keywords would be it. Scientists have proved the long term benefits of keywords whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your website. Oh, never mind. In 20 months time you’ll look back and conclude it was a clunky embarrassment. Your website won’t be cutting edge for as long as you imagine, so enjoy it while you can. Don’t be frightened of your site, or too wary of experimenting with it. It has the potential to be something special.
Take good care of your website and it will take good care of you. Like so many things in life, you only get out what you put in. Remember that content is king – it doesn’t matter if it is your content or web2.0 user generated so long as it’s fresh and original. Whatever you do: don’t stand still.
Don’t take customers or website users for granted. There is always another supplier just a mouse click away. Cultivating loyalty and a community spirit are two ways to ensure repeat business. But don’t ignore the vital importance of being competitively priced and providing first-rate customer service.
Don’t be reckless about security, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Your users take website security seriously and if they lose confidence, winning them back will not be easy.
Know, too, that web users won’t behave as predicted. What seems perfectly logical to you will not necessarily be how site visitors use your site in reality. The benefits of website testing pre-launch cannot be overestimated.
Don’t worry about the future – worrying consumes energy you could otherwise put more productively into planning and preparation. Worrying is about as effective as shouting at the monitor screen when your browser runs at a snail’s pace. The real worries in life are apt to be those that never crossed your mind; the kind that only reveal themselves an hour before an important deadline.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Find time to learn My SQL, XML and the other three letter abbreviations that you bump into regularly.
Reading the manual is not a sign of weakness. Read the getting started guide before you start.
Get to know your customers, you’ll never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your first customer; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Don’t beat yourself up over page ranking or search engine results. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself. Be careful about congratulating yourself too much, or berating yourself either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
Try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But only extend this to potential customers if you can afford to do so. And never buy stuff over the phone from cold callers.
Spam happens. It will never go away. Treat with deep suspicion any email purporting to be from a bank or other organisation that requests you log in via a link contained in the message. Be vigilant for phishing and scam emails at all times.
Keep your eye on the bigger picture. Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae or carried away with all the latest technology. It is your customers that count - selling your goods and services online is ultimately the end purpose. Go for function over form. No one is too impressed these days by a flashy website.
But trust me on the keywords.
(with apologies to Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody’s free (to wear sunscreen) the sunscreen song (class of ’99).)
