People find your website from different places. They don’t always land on the Home page, instead they open an interior page. Your interior page needs to entice visitors to stay. If it doesn’t, they won’t even look around further. All that time you spent on crafting the perfect home page goes to waste. Do you design your website starting with the Home page and work your way inwards? Most designers do. Jonathan Christopher explains in Improving Your Process: Work From the Inside Out that designing the simplest interior page first and work your way to the home page can help you build a better and consistent website.
Stefan Mischook of killersites.com talks about how web programming is more than memorization. It is about the development process. Being able to create a useable and attractive website is more important than if remembering specific syntax. If you forget, you can always look it up. Even experienced web developers and designers can’t remember everything about of JavaScript or CSS.
My schedule only allowed me to attend one day at WordCamp in Chicago. I went to the Saturday sessions.
WordCamp Chicago took place at DePaul University. The website had directions from one of the sponsors, MapQuest. Their directions made it simple to find DePaul University. Once you walked in the conference was easy to find.
My favorite sessions were “Advanced SEO: Thinking like a Searchbot”, “Developing for Success, or Any Fool Can Do This” and the Unconference track “WP Frameworks (or not…). In “Advanced SEO: Thinking like a Searchbot” provided tips talked about how search engines are the new gatekeeper for information and that you should use links in your content because it count more than in the sidebar. Heather Acton led the “WP Frameworks (or not…) Unconference session. The discussion on WP Frameworks was fun. We had a diverse group of people: developers, designers, new to WP and experienced with WP. As I group, we talked about the benefits and challenges of using frameworks. I learned that you need to decide what your projects goals are and then decide if creating your own theme or using a framework is the better option. Frameworks don’t fit all projects. In “Developing for Success, or Any Fool Can Do This”, Brian Richards gave his tips for success by talking about his experience as an entrepreneur and using humor to help motivate the crowd to succeed. He said that “You don’t have to be the best, but you can’t be the worst.” Brian demonstrated that “business = building relationships”.
A short collection of tips and tricks to help you build your business.
- 6 Essential Skills Every Entrepreneur Should have Inc magazine explains that you can develop leadership skills that help you to become a better entrepreneur.
- 16 Smarter Ways to use Linked In to Build Your Business You can use LinkedIn for more than just job searching. It can be used to help you build your business.
- 4 Simple Ways to Get Customer Feedback Online Every entrepreneur needs to know what their customers think about their business. Here are 4 low cost ways to get feedback.
- 10 Tips for Better Startup Marketing Startups can’t rely on just one form of marketing. You can’t put up a website or a Facebook Fan page and hope that your customers will find. You need to go to them using the social media channels that they use.
- 7 Ways to Build a Business Around WordPress About 15% of websites are made with WordPress. WordPress is a popular content management tool. They are plenty of opportunities for people to develop a business using WordPress.
I found a podcast for developers called Startups For The Rest Of Us. The team of Mike Taber and Rob Walling explains to how to launch your own software product. They have 20+ years of experience in launching their own products. Startups For The Rest Of Us guides developers who want to launch their own product and helps you to avoid the mistakes that Mike Taber and Rob Walling made.
If you are thinking of launching your own product whether a web application or native mobile app, check out their podcast for tips on how to get started.