Feature Article

Internet and Business Online - Red Tape Removal

by: Scott Lindsay HighPowerSites.com

Mike Krzyzewski once said, "The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions."

Take some time to think about that from the perspective of online business ownership. Is it possible to so legislate your business that you no longer have the spontaneity you need for creating something new and flexible?

Most businesses enact policies to deal with issues when a situation comes up that they don't know how to handle at first blush. Once they work through the issue they revise policy to reflect how they first dealt with the issue.

The potential problem with this scenario is that the exact situation with the exact circumstances may never come into play. In other words the policy may be applied in a circumstance that can be viewed in a slightly different context.

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Business owners often look at this as a means of making sure their business environment is fair, but for every rule change there is always a new scenario to challenge it often resulting in even more policies.

I'm certainly not calling for anarchy, but what if there were fewer rules and better decision makers? What if the business owner judged the merits of problems based on existing circumstances? What if a few common sense rules were applied to all cases?

Take for instance the constitution. In the case of our political leaders and judges they can take the constitution and amend the policy derived from the constitution to reflect a unique and sometimes isolated case that is often applied to cases it probably should be applied to.

Sometimes laws can be enacted that are book length in their detail. When lawyers look at policy they make sure there are plenty of 'provisos' and 'therefores' to assist in covering a business from litigation. I suppose it may be necessary to enact sweeping policies simply because we exist in a litigious society.

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It would be nice if common sense would prevail in all situations, however the truth is more and more we are being asked to ensure that we are spelling out in the clearest way possible the expectations we have for employees and what our customers can expect from us when they choose to do business with us.

Even if we exist in an environment where we have to go overboard to explain ourselves it still makes sense to attempt to refine our objectives into a distilled and simplified form that helps our customers understand our core values. These should be the primary directives that help guide everything we do. Policies should only be revised in light of our core values.

Decision-making requires thinking, but when you know more about who you are as a business the easier the decision-making will be. The one thing every business owner tries to avoid is bogging down his or her ability to do business in a proverbial sea of red tape. While this scenario is desired it is often nearly impossible as policy manuals continue to grow at an alarming rate.

It can be hard to balance the business of business with marketing and decision making, but the time that you take in making the machine run more smoothly is time that make your business more vibrant and flexible both now and in the future.

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Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Use the Website Builder with HighPowerSites.com or the Easy Website Builder at BuildAGreatSite.com. Make Money and Sell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.

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Second Article

Web Friendly Writing

by: Lauren Hobson Five Sparrows Marketing Blog

Reading content on a web site is quite different from reading text that is printed out on paper. Reading web site text can cause eye fatigue, slower reading rates, and can even lower the reader's comprehension of the material. That's why writing for your web site requires a different approach from other types of writing that you may be more familiar with. When writing content for your web site, try to remember these tips:

Use lots of white space on the page, and keep sentences and paragraphs as short as possible.

Use plenty of headings, titles, bullets, and numbered lists to help present information effectively and break up the look of the text.

Make your links stand out, so visitors can easily tell a link from ordinary text. Underlining and changing the color of link text helps readers identify links quickly.

Cross-link information on your pages, and use links to keep related topics connected.

Use "universal" navigation; that is, use a menu on all web pages to make it easy for users to find information on your site and also find their way back.

Write for human visitors, not search engine spiders. Although it is important to use your keywords in your page text, that doesn't mean you can write sentences that are awkward or unclear. There are lots of other optimization techniques you can use that don't affect a reader's experience.

By adjusting your writing to be web-friendly, you can make it easier and more comfortable for your visitors to spend some quality time on your web site. And if visitors are willing to spend their time, it won't be long until they are spending money as well.

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Lauren Hobson is the Editor of Biz Talk Newsletter and the Five Sparrows Marketing Blog from Five Sparrows, LLC. Read the most recent Five Sparrows articles on small business websites and marketing on our business blog at www.fivesparrows.com/blog, or subscribe to our free newsletter at www.fivesparrows.com

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