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The old phrase, “you don’t know what you are missing out on” is definitely one to consider applying to old business Websites.  The Web has been around for long enough now that many businesses are starting to outgrow their Websites, without realizing it.  Many Websites that were built in the early 2000s are still around.

Certainly, if you ask a business owner whether they want to outlay a large amount of money to completely rethink, redesign and rebuild their online presence, they might wonder why they should fix something that does not seem to be broken.  The uninformed economic decision might always be to keep maintaining the old site, with the occasional update, rather than start again.  They might have moved premises a couple of times in that time, replaced their car two or three times, replaced pretty much all of their computers and printers, phones, fax and coffee machine, but the most critical face of their business – their Website – sits there chugging away year after year without being given a thought as to how it might perform better, as all their other shiny new acquisitions have been.

So here are a few reasons to consider whether it might actually make good economic sense to invest in a new Website.

1) New standards
Website standards have changed significantly in the last few years.  For starters, old websites were designed for 800 pixel wide screens.  Now the base line is 1024 pixel screens.  This a) makes old Websites look too small and b) gives new Websites a whole lot more screen real estate to deliver content to the viewer.  The code behind Websites has evolved a great deal as well.  With the release of HTML5 and CSS3, an entire new level of Website creativity and content delivery can be achieved.

2) Changing expectations
As we all well know, when we visit Websites on the Internet, we are getting more opinionated and judgmental about what we see.  It is most likely as a result of information overload, but our tendency to hit the back button within seconds of seeing a Website is getting stronger.  We also expect more of any Website that we have decided to spend more than a few seconds on.  We want the navigation to be intuitive, the information to be comprehensive and the overall look, feel and style of the site to be professional, friendly and appropriate.  Older Websites, which were often built on limited budgets, by people who might have been programmers rather than communications or business experts, may not be good enough any more.  You may very well be losing business without even knowing it, as more people hit the back button a little bit too soon.

3) Keeping up with the Joneses
Each day you leave your old Website as it is, is another day that you give your competitors an opportunity to forge ahead of you and win new business from discerning clients.  Sitting pretty might be a good strategy while your site is bubbling away in search engines and getting reasonable response rates, but over time – and without you knowing – you may start slipping down against other Websites.  Web usage is surging, so if your site traffic is remaining flat, chances are your competitors are picking up the extra business with their more sophisticated, social-media savvy and dynamic Websites.  When customers are comparison shopping (which we all do online as it is so easy), your site and your competitors' sites stand side by side in the visitor’s mind and they will most likely return to the sites they consider to be more user-friendly, more informative and more professional.

4) Mobile is booming
The statistics on people accessing Websites on their mobile devices are staggering, and growing every day.  Old sites almost certainly are not very mobile-friendly, especially when many new sites now are designed with dedicated mobile versions.  It is now possible to have a completely separate ‘style sheet’ to deliver your Website to mobile devices.  Clearly you are going to be better off if the growing mobile audience is going to be able to view your site easily.  Anyone using mobile Apple devices is not going to be able to view any Adobe Flash content by default, so if your old site has any Flash (and some old sites are all Flash), all your Apple-using visitors are going to be disappointed.

5) Websites are now part of the social media landscape
Old Websites were built as stand-alone entities.  They might have had databases and other functionality, but they tended to be built without regard to the wider Web.  Nowadays, Websites form a dynamic connection to the social Web, not just with like buttons and links to Twitter, but as conduits of content from all over the Web.  You can be feeding the most relevant, live, dynamic content from a multitude of sources, both your own and from others in your industry and beyond, to enhance your Website’s information and appeal.  You can also provide the tools so that others can easily spread the word about your Website.  This amplifies your presence greatly and is another thing you are missing out on by hanging on to your old Website

6) You have evolved, why hasn’t your Website?
Many Websites are now only vague reflections of the actual business they represent.  Someone many years ago, sat down and wrote a few pages of text about their company, grabbed a few images and asked a Web designer/developer to put it online.  Meanwhile, their business has grown, evolved, expanded into new areas, re-defined, consolidated and changed their customer base and service offering.  None of this is reflected in the Website, because it was all too hard to sit down once again and come up with a whole new Website full of content.  This is verging on negligent.  People make up their mind about your business when they see your Website, yet you are telling them that you are the same business you were 8 years ago!  No wonder you are not getting the right kind of leads from the Web.  Websites define you and they also qualify leads.  Your Website must be brought up to date to re-define your current operation and attract the customers you want now.

7) It’s not that expensive
How much has your Website cost you?  Not much, if you haven’t touched it for years.  The original cost would have amortized many times over and no doubt with just a few new leads it would have paid for itself years ago.  However, the thought of spending a big chunk of money right now may not seem that appealing.  It seems strange, but many businesses, even when they know their Website has been a big asset to them, still baulk at forking out the investment for a new one.

Perhaps it is because Websites are so virtual and their benefits seem intangible.  In fact, the benefits are both intangible and highly measurable.  Branding, positioning, reputation, communication… all of these more intangible functions are performed by a Website.  To achieve the same things without an online presence is very expensive.  Printing, print advertising, point of sale, expos and conferences all cost a great deal more in total than a Website.  Their impact is even less measurable, too, yet many business continue to sit on their old Website and spend far more money on traditional media and marketing.

When it comes to tangible benefits, Websites are unbeatable.  With tools like Google Analytics, every single visit is tracked, every search term used to find you is logged and over time a massive amount of rich, interpretable and informative data is collated to help you continually improve your Website and measure the effectiveness of all your marketing activity.  The value a modern Website can bring you far outweighs the setup and maintenance costs

It is hardly surprising that larger companies invest millions of dollars into their online marketing, including setting up entire teams of in-house staff to manage the assets.  They are not doing it for fun, they are doing it because it makes economic sense.  Smaller businesses need to realise the cost benefit of online marketing and invest proportionately to get the desired returns.  It won’t happen if you don’t do anything, but it will definitely happen with the right help and support from a speciality service provider and consultant, combined with a little bit of time, effort and investment on your behalf.

8) It’s not as hard as you think
Just like any project, a new website is just a process that needs to be embarked upon with a clear vision for the desired outcomes and a methodical step-by-step approach.  It may seem daunting, or you may be remembering last time you did it and shuddering, but with the help of professionals who know how to manage the process, it really is quite easy, once you break down the steps and address them one by one.  There are many elements to a successful modern Website and you will have to spend some time thinking about your business and defining what you do and what you want.  This can be a lot of fun and is actually an awesome opportunity to take stock and think about where you are going and where you want to be.

Your Website can become your tour guide for your business into the future as it defines where you are going, what you want and how you are going to get there.  With great design, content, navigation and interactivity, your multi-dimensional, multi-media presence can become a beacon, lighting the path and guiding people to your door.  All you need to do is bite the bullet and do it.  Just like it is easier to sit on the lounge eating chocolate than it is to go to the gym, it might be easier to keep your old Website than create a new one, but as we all know, in the long run, we are all a lot better off if we get off that lounge chair and hit the exercise mat.  The long-term gain of doing something far outweighs the short-term gain of avoiding what you know is the right thing to do.

If you want to find out more about taking the big step and rebuilding your online presence strategically, professionally and wisely, contact us.  We can show you, as we hope this article explains, how valuable a decision it could be.

By Stefan Sojka

It’s time to add Writer/Producer/Director/Actor to the résumé.

I got my first answering machine somewhere back in the late 80s.  I’ll never forget the horror of hearing my own voice on that micro-cassette tape.  I re-recorded that message at least 50 times before I was happy.  It was the first step on a long and slippery slope into business-oriented media production.

Before the answering machine, the only people who spoke into microphones were Shakespearean actors.  There was no purpose, nor facility for the average person to lay down their voice, let alone film themselves.  Humans had only barely gotten used to using phones – and not very well at that.  Without the feedback loop of listening to ourselves speak, or seeing ourselves on video, we were oblivious to how ordinary we all looked and sounded.

Fast forward a few decades and media production tools are everywhere.  By the age of three, most kids have been filmed more than any actor from the golden years of Hollywood, photographed more than Marilyn Monroe and laid down at least a few dozen answering machine messages and karaoke tracks.  Everyone is now expected to be a multi-media artist.  Every computer (every phone, just about) is a recording studio, movie production house and photo lab.

So why don’t more businesses use audio and video to communicate?  Why is it so easy to film baby’s first steps, but a guided tour of your offices with a few valuable insights into the services you provide hasn’t been made yet?

We might have the recording tools, but what about the lighting, audio engineering, script-writing, voice-over style, storyboard, green screen and a dozen other elements of good production that don’t come packaged with every laptop sold?   Making quality media is not that easy and putting in a great performance does not come naturally to most people born before the video age.

The only way to overcome your fear is to just have a go.  Write a script, rehearse it, film it, watch it back, cringe with utter embarrassment, then do it all again, slightly better each time, until you begin to like what you see.  Experiment with lighting and sound, posture and pace.  Before too long, you will learn how to look and sound great.

Without fail, anyone who actually perseveres will transform into a more appealing media-friendly version of themselves.  With a little experimentation on the technical side of things, using reasonable quality gear and the awesome editing software that is available these days, you can cut a perfectly respectable piece of promo in no time.

If it all gets too hard, get some training; voice, TV presenting, script writing and video editing.  No one really has a good excuse anymore for not picking up all the skills necessary to become a savvy and sophisticated spokesmodel for their own business.

We all know how effective great multimedia is – we consume it every day by the Gigabyte.  I know if I am researching a product or service, I will devour whatever media I can find.  Your customers are doing exactly the same thing.  You really would do well to get your personalized message in front of them.  If you have a particular expertise or specialist knowledge, the world is hanging out to hear about it.

Every businessperson is now a media performer and producer.  You just need to decide, right now, that you are going to be a really good one.  Lights… camera… mouse… action!

By Stefan Sojka

It takes a lot of hard work to make everything look so easy.

I had a potential client call recently, excited about a new e-commerce Website they wanted to launch.  The domain name sounded great and they had plans to go viral and generate big sales.

In one short phone call, they described their idea.  They had clearly been thinking about this for a long time.  I filled an A4 page with notes, as they proceeded to describe their vision; a totally customised, world-class, elegant, classy, beautiful, powerful, enterprise-level entity with enough bells and whistles to form an orchestra.

It was our first phone call, so I asked: “Have you prepared a brief?”  The answer?  “No.”  “Do you have a budget?”  “Uh… no… as small as possible, please, because I am just getting started…”

There is nothing wrong with starting off small and dreaming big – most successful businesses do – but it suddenly dawned on me that I was the first person to ever put pen to paper on this project.  It was a big idea without an ounce of actual work put into it.  These plans were hatched during a few months of daydreaming and Web surfing, dictated over the phone to me, who was now expected to make all those daydreams come true.  Easier said than done.

If you want to start any business, you usually put a lot of planning into it – why would an online business be any different?  In fact, a Web-based business often requires more planning and preparation than most ‘real world’ businesses.  This is due to the additional layers of complexity, combined with the inherent risks and costs of getting things wrong.  There are awesome e-commerce packages available and countless other great resources.  There’s a rapidly maturing industry of Web professionals too, but time is money.  The more time you can put in yourself, the better.

It is understandable, I guess.  Websites that generate millions (if not billions) of dollars all look so elegant and simple.  Everything has been carefully engineered (after 1,000 iterations) to look fresh, clean and effortless.  Add to that the use of the word “free” and “easy” in just about every online advert and one would be forgiven for getting the impression that Web enterprises were a piece of cake.  Getting ‘something’ online might be easy, but getting exactly what you want could involve a few hard yards.

Everything you want to happen on your Website needs to be told to happen that way …in code.  It is often just as hard making a site elegant and clean, as it is to make it look messy and clunky.  When you bring e-commerce into it, things can get complicated.  You are engineering an experience that ends in people handing over their credit card details.  It’s like running a shop with no shopkeeper – it has to be pretty special to get someone to willingly open up their wallet and serve themselves.

Even static Websites can take a lot of work to get right.  One site we recently launched took 7 people 266 hours.  Fortunately, the site owner put in a huge chunk of that time, saving money and delivering a far better end result.

So, if you have a great idea for an online business, write it down, make a plan, do your research, set aside as much time and money as you possibly can, define everything in intimate detail – then seek out professional help to make it happen.  That way you’ll both be on the same page and have a far greater chance of making your dream come alive.

By Stefan Sojka

The worst experiences can often deliver the best lessons.

Anyone who has been in business for more than a few nanoseconds has likely encountered at least one difficult customer.  Something about certain people and money trips a short circuit in their brain, where logic, decency and empathy get replaced with desperation, anger and a sense of entitlement to the right to be not very nice.  We’ve all seen it – maybe we’ve been it, on occasions.  The customer is always right, right?

In most cases, that maxim works well as a guide to good customer service, but what about those nasty characters, who make it their business to become your business’ worst nightmare?

One reason why large companies pay lawyers small fortunes to write reams of disclaimers is that they are inoculating themselves from bad customers.  Small businesses are not so lucky.  We often risk people walking right through our front doors and creating havoc.

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I set out in small business was to presume that everyone had the same ethics and values as I do.  Of course they are all open, honest, fair, easy-going and like to resolve any misunderstandings amicably.  Yeah, right!

Every small business owner has a story.  I’ve had my fair share.  Clients who refused to pay, just because they didn’t feel like it.  Clients who blamed me because they hired the wrong person to head up their project, then sat back gleefully and watched it implode just so they could unleash their anger at me, the same way they do with all their suppliers.  Then there are those who invest their entire existence into something so that the tiniest issue becomes an utter tragedy, leading to midnight phone calls to sort it out after they’ve polished off two bottles of red.

I can laugh about it now, but these customers took their toll.  I have associates who have faced far worse; threats of violence, screaming, humiliation and huge financial losses, even bankruptcy from unpaid accounts.  Bad customers might be 1 in 100, but that one can ruin everything – at best they can sure suck the fun out of what should be a passionate and joyful pastime, operating a small business.  My worst clients have taught me two things:

There is no obligation to serve every customer who comes along

“We reserve the right to refuse service” is a powerful statement.  Taking on the wrong customer is simply not worth it.  Even though a budding small business might feel a necessity to take on everything that comes along, the opportunity cost of picking up the wrong client is too high.  Trust me, there are plenty of awesome customers out there.

Recognize the early warning signs.

With hindsight, I should have listened to the alarm bells.  At the first meeting, they told me about a terrible experience they had with a previous supplier (was it the supplier’s fault?).  They wanted me to help them take the world by storm, but they didn’t have any money right now.  There was just something about their demeanor that I knew was dodgy, but I didn’t listen to my instincts, or my wife, when she said, “I don’t like them.  They’re trouble.  Don’t do it”.

I would have preferred to have never had any bad clients, but they sure cured me of my innocence and taught me that I deserve better.  Life is too short.  I want to spend it taking care of all my cool clients who share my values and want a fun, exciting and rewarding ride. Don’t you?

By Stefan Sojka

Don’t throw the real baby out with the virtual bathwater.

There is something about online business that tends to set us up for a huge amount of misaligned expectations.  With everything just one click away, the hidden complexities of Web functionality lead people to believe that it all happens auto-magically.  Some coder just copy-pasted in a few lines of recycled PHP and ‘whammo!’…instant global success story!  I have had people seriously enquire about replicating eBay and/or FaceBook for $5K and honestly believing that should do the trick.

It’s kind of understandable.  Most of the hard work is hidden in scripts and files and thanks to the limitless talent of a planet full of awesome GUI designers, everything looks so slick, clean and simple.  The Internet is the most complex entity in the known Universe, yet its astounding success is due to its belying simplicity.   If it didn’t look and feel easy to use, it would still to this day remain the bastion of computer scientists, hackers and brainiacs.

As a business owner, I still need to contend with the complexities.  If my business model is almost exclusively an online model, such as selling downloadable software, I am going to need a team of coders on hand to manage the high level of sophistication involved; security, functionality, payment, membership management.  Imagine; a Website as deceptively lightweight as Twitter requires 140 employees to keep it running – at a loss!

The big growth area now seems to be hybrid businesses, with one foot in the online space and one foot in the real world.  Think of pizza delivery.  You need a complex online system to manage and process customer orders and an efficient off-line operation to get the pizza to my door within 30 minutes.  Similarly, sites like Groupon rely enormously on the online component delivering deals and getting online exposure to billions of users, but without the real-world participating businesses delivering on those great offers, Groupon’s image could turn sour real fast.

Then there are your businesses that most of us are engaged in, that operate primarily in reality but use the Web to promote products/services and attract new business.  Even the simplest of “brochure-ware” sites need to be created to a high standard to reflect the quality of the business and to have some basic technical expertise applied, even if it is just for contact forms, updating content and measuring the site’s performance.

There is no avoiding the fact that I have to get the technical stuff right.  But what will really make or break the operation is everything else.  If I expect that the code will magically solve all my business problems and make me an overnight squillionaire, it will be at my peril.  Technology alone will not cut it.  Why does software keep on getting upgraded?  Because it will never be perfect.  It’s what we do with it and how we integrate it into our business that counts.

Here’s what I focus on; customer service, communication, quality control, administration systems and processes, accounts, building relationships with valued associates, ensuring (not assuming) that I am on the same page as my customers, diarizing everything, keeping time-sheets, keeping my desk tidy, my files organized, and my inbox manageable.  You know, all the stuff that prevents my life and business from descending into a chaotic nightmare and will only get worse the more things grow.

Every business now must have a layer of technology surrounding it and you have to get the right solutions and systems in place.  But as technology pervades our lives and the lives of our competitors, it’s the fundamentals of off-line business practice that will determine our ultimate success.

By Stefan Sojka

Complacency was once a desirable state of the masses – a place where we could raise families and live nice quiet lives.  Progress was someone else’s problem.  The networked world has pushed us all into the rapids, sink or swim.

Before we all plugged in and turned on, most advancement in society, economics and life in general was pursued by scientists, policy-makers and big business, running their own agendas of discovery, vote-winning or competition.  The rest of the world moved at a fairly steady pace; birth, childhood, school, work, marriage, procreation, retirement, death.  Our ambitions were modest, our scope narrow and our acceptance of our position in the scheme of things was never an issue.

One forgets how recent the global travel phenomenon is, or the notion of having more than one vocation (or partner) in a lifetime, mature age university education or reality TV.  All of these activities have opened our eyes to a broader, deeper, richer life (except, perhaps reality TV!)

I would argue, however, that there is an innate part of us that actually likes being complacent, that could spend our entire lives chasing nothing, kicking back and watching the world go by.  It’s the part that yearns for a sea-change and a house-boat.

The irony is that the only way we’ll ever afford a sea-change is if we work real hard.  Yet, we wage an eternal battle against that voice inside that thinks we are already there, sitting pretty.  “I have a Website.  I’m in Google.  I use email and have a fancy smart phone – I’ve made it.  In fact I’ll go on FaceBook and tell everyone how awesome I am.”

How many Websites do you see that haven’t been updated for five years?  News pages with ‘news’ from 2006?  Websites that are still 800 pixels wide, reflecting a screen size standard that has long been superseded?  Coming soon?  Under construction?  Page not found?  Each instance is a shining example of complacency.  Isn’t the Internet supposed to be a revolution in communication and the opportunity of a lifetime to be seized by one and all?  What’s going on?

I am always amazed at how many people’s entire business plan for their Website is to have accidentally managed to get on page one of Google for a couple of good keywords five years ago, or to sit on a pay-per-click campaign they haven’t reviewed since it started.  See the panic set in when a few other Websites start pushing them down the list, or begin bidding against them for paid listings until they drop off the page completely.  Sitting pretty is no way to survive on the Internet.  Getting busy is.

Do I want to be a distant memory, locked away in the deeper recesses of the Web, or an uppermost thought in the world’s collective mind?  I have to stay fresh and keep up to speed.  However well I might think I am doing on-line, I can always do better.  However hard I might be working to stay in front, someone else is working harder, to re-make, re-model and re-invent themselves and their market – my market.

I may not like it, but things are moving very fast.  Everything is feeding back on everything else in an infinite evolutionary loop.  Keep up, or risk being left out of the loop altogether.

I would love to be sitting pretty, but now is not the time.  No house-boat this year.  There’s a lot more kayaking to be done, thrashing about with the paddle, trying not to get overturned, mid-stream.  I’ll have my sea-change… someday.  It certainly won’t happen by itself.

By Stefan Sojka

In this age of information overload, everyone is desperate to push through the crowd to find whatever attention space is left on humanity's virtual Bondi, lay down their digital beach towel and bask in the sun.  I need a good strategy.

It must be the Antarctic chill of winter that’s causing me to think of beach metaphors, or maybe it’s the increasingly icy despondency I’m feeling as I realise that I am a member of a species who now has to compete with billions of others for any recognition and validation, while my biology is programmed to be satisfied with finding a mate, a spot on the beach and perhaps a little respect from the head of the village.

Now, maybe there is very little separating my fingertips from world domination, except perhaps my own incapacity to manipulate the world to my ways.  Surely the entire planet wants to read my blog, laugh at my YouTube videos, buy my stuff and be swayed by my politics?  If only they weren’t all thinking the same thing about themselves!

What makes it so infuriating is how easy it seems for some people to crack it.  That “Evolution of Dance” guy, Mr “Leave Britney Alone” or even such luminaries as Twitter’s Biz Stone or the YouTube creators.  Film yourself doing a stupid dance or build a stupid Website that mimics SMS and the world is your oyster.

I’m starting to work out the secret.  It’s the same secret AC/DC stumbled upon back in the 1970s when the guys first started out.  They’ve continued doing pretty much the same thing for over 35 years.  Keep it simple, and play it loud!  Simplify, then amplify.

Regardless of my field of endeavour, I must refine and perfect it, optimise and distil it to its purest form, to give it the best chance of catching on.  MacDonalds did it with its franchise system, Apple did it with the iPod, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV and Eric Banadinovi? did it with their stage names – in fact, the more I think about it, anything that has struck a chord with the masses and found its day in the sun has this fundamental quality:  a perfect form, able to be repeated, replicated and broadcast.

Even the most complex idea can succeed when its essence is simple and its processes refined.  Man on the moon.  Google.  Sat-Nav.  Word™.
Less mess, more elegance, less instructions, more usability, less clicks, more downloads.  Simplify.  Amplify.

If I am to have half a chance at getting anything to go viral, catch on, hit the charts and make the news, I’ve got to get this right – and so do you.
De-clutter the office and home, avoid anything we know is a waste of time or dead end, then take what we have of value and perfect it.  Make every email, flyer, blog post, press release and domain name more succinct, readable, usable and catchy.  Hire designers to improve aesthetics and other professionals to re-engineer every aspect of what we do, if we can’t do it ourselves.

Learn from nature, the ultimate engineer of efficiency and economy facilitating abundance.  Extreme complexity exists; our grand plans no doubt contain labyrinthine sophistication, but the underlying formulas by which they are created must be forehead-slappingly pure.

Imagine.  I have a dream.  Just do it.  Think different.  Intel inside.  Six Hats.  Linux.  E=mc².  Om.

The universe expanded from a single point.  What’s my point?  If I find it, I’ll go off.  With a bang.

By Stefan Sojka

With the phenomenal successes of FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., it's easy to ignore failure as one of the critical factors in their journey and the journey of their also-ran counterparts.

Oh, for a time machine!  I would travel back to 1995 and register facebook.com, twitter.com, youtube.com, myspace.com and a hundred other domain names – I'd be a trillionaire!  Reminds me of a friend of mine who was offered a few acres of beachfront property in Byron Bay back in the 70s for $8,000 – who would have known, eh?

One of the most fascinating universal ironies is how utterly unpredictable the future seems to be, yet as soon as the future glides on through the present and cements itself into the past, hindsight turns all those uncertainties into the bleeding obvious and convinces us that we could have predicted it all, if only we'd kicked ourselves.

It doesn't help when everyone who achieves astronomical success goes around telling us in their smarmy autobiographies that it all turned out just as they expected, thanks to their brilliant talent and superhuman level of dedication and determination.  What we forget is that all the losers would say exactly the same thing, if things had turned out differently for them.

I recently interviewed Aussie Internet entrepreneur, Collis Ta'eed, who commandeers the burgeoning Envato network.  It was refreshing to hear his answer to "if you could do it all again, what would you do differently", and he replied "I would make all the same mistakes".  He sees his failures as the most important factors in his success.

Success, I think, is actually quite unpredictable.  Sure, you can control many factors; you can work hard, make smart choices and respond well to hiccoughs, but there is always the element of chance that the losers will always blame and the winners will pretend was part of their plan.

I guess the first rule is to just keep going, regardless, ready for the next stroke of luck to land in my lap.  Through all my failures and hard-knock schooling, I'll be all the more prepared this time.

Life is like a game of Tetris (sorry Mr Gump).  The possibilities come cascading towards us as we madly try to exert whatever limited control we have on the outcome.  We miss a few, but somehow we are given more opportunity to connect another line and catch up.  The more mistakes we make, the better we get at the game.  By game over, we've left a trail of success and failure, achievement and regret, in, let's face it, fairly equal measure.

While Facebook and Twitter ride the crest of a massive wave, their reign is never assured and there are tens of thousands of start-ups like yours and mine, thrashing out our intentions every day, stumbling, falling, dusting ourselves off and getting back out there.  We've probably all got 100 domain names registered and our eye on some land half-way across the Nullabor that will one day be the main street of a megacity.  We're failing every day – and creeping ever closer to our destiny.

The first thing to do with any one of those 100 domain names is to just start.  As James Cameron said "failure is always an option, but fear is not."

By Stefan Sojka

The Web is increasingly my go-to place for everything; advice, support, intel and inspiration.  Is my traditional bull-dust detector up for the task of discerning what’s good for me?

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times (I can feel a novel coming on... dammit, I’ve only got 500 words!)  The world seems to be plunging ever deeper into chaos and crisis at precisely the same time as mind-boggling scientific breakthroughs are occurring.  Financial, social and economic disasters abound, while the Internet explodes with individuals and orgs purporting to have all the answers.

Pre-Web, there weren’t many people to turn to in times of need.  My solicitor?  Priest?  MP?  GP?  Bank manager?  Now every ‘consultant’, ‘expert’ and ‘coach’ is Twittering and blogging their personal contribution to solving my problems and creating my (their) Utopian future.

The problem Web-based advice and information is that there are a few additional dimensions that affect both the advice itself, the delivery of it and my perception of its usefulness.

Like, do I not trust someone just because they haven’t got time to update their Website regularly?  Or, if some ‘guru’ or other is highly active online and seems to have a lot of followers, sponsors and links all over the place, does that make what they have to say any more credible?  Does my style-over-substance sensibility dismiss an expert’s proposition out-of-hand because his/her site looks like crap?  Do I not even bother to read it, because it has no fancy graphics, bullet points and roll-over effects?

I need to keep a few extra wits about me, now that new media carries the message.  The simple task of discerning anything of value in amongst the sheer volume of information is a daunting one.  Judgment criteria go way beyond the content:

How did I find it in the first place?  A lot of sites get traffic thanks to nothing more than their search engine friendliness.  Google, Bing and Co. are working ever harder to bring you quality results, but they are a long way off passing too many value judgments and opinions on the links they deliver.

Is the self-appointed ‘opinion leader’ a sycophant who is just very good at recruiting followers through powers of persuasion, rather than the substance of their message?  It’s amazing what a blogger can cook up with a teaspoon of fawning and a few cups of self-aggrandisement.

Are they literate?  Even in today’s wrld of txting & ROFLMAOing, I maintain that someone with a reasonable command of the Queen’s English probably has most of their other faculties intact as well.

Is the thinking part of a groundswell?  Ideas whose times have come tend to pop up independently in multiple locations.  The best way forward is most likely going to be through ideas that many people are now beginning to expound, rather than one nutter banging on with his/her manifesto.  Does anyone agree with me here?  Oh the irony!  This is your NETT nutter, signing off for another month...

By Stefan Sojka

In business, one of the most important places on the Internet is your own Website.  So why do so many business Websites seem so unplanned, unprofessional and unfinished?  Do they really not care, or is something else going on?

I see two main factors conspiring against small business when it comes to Websites.  The first is the potential infinite scope and complexity of a Website – this tends to immobilise most people as they don’t know where to start.  The second is the false sense of simplicity that the hugely successful Websites lull us all into, giving the impression that they practically built themselves.

As users, we make ‘one-click’ book purchases, transfer money from country to country, bid furiously in auctions and buy plane tickets in the exact same window where we read the ‘about us’ page of our local pest controller.  From where we sit, it’s all the same – easy, fast and cheap.  We forget that the Auction site spends about $800 million a year on programmers.  Perhaps it is understandable that I got a phone call from a guy recently who wanted me to help him build ‘another eBay’ with a $5K budget!  As far as he knew, eBay was just a page on a screen with a few buttons on it.

If you want both a good laugh and the reassurance that you are not alone in your own incomprehension of what makes everything tick online, try http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com – real-world examples of just how out of touch some of us are.

There is hope.  With a little research and perhaps a bit of professional advice, you will learn to spot the difference between a $5K site and a multi-billion dollar global enterprise.  You might realise exactly where you fit in:  Somewhere in between.  Simple, affordable Websites can do amazing things, but they can only do what they are paid to do.  You are the one paying, so you need to know what you are paying for.  So start planning.

Before you approach Web designers for quotes for an unspecified length of string, work out what you want the site to do – write the draft content, collect the images, determine what features would be perfect for your business, decide how you want people to communicate with you, get some legal advice, business advice & technical advice.  Draw some rough wire-frames & collect a long list of links to competitor sites, sites you like and sites you hate.  Look around and see what other people are doing.  Ask yourself why particular sites seem to work so well – they probably planned it that way.

Your Website, if done properly, will be the cornerstone of your business.  It performs marketing, communication, branding, positioning, PR, showcase, statistics collection, customer database, Search Engine Optimisation, reputation and good will.  It is one of your most valuable assets, performing all these services for you even while you sleep.  So invest in it, starting with your own time.  Plan, plan, plan!

Try http://www.e-businessguide.gov.au as a starting point, then get out some paper and start scribbling.