Try a New Route

Do you take the same way home everyday from work? Ever wonder if there is a better way to get there, ever wonder if it could take less time? Did you ever ask somebody else which way they go and find out there way is WAY better than yours?

This happens all the time. It’s easy to drive down the same path if your goal is only to get to the destination.

The problem is the world isn’t slowing down. There is more to do with less time. It’s way more competitive then ever. Today it’s all about improving something. It could be the ride home. It could be how to score better on your test. It could be fulfilling more orders per day. It could be talking to your child or spouse.

If you continually do the same thing over and over, you don’t learn how to do things better. You don’t just get better over time. You need to learn to test new things out. Try to do whatever you are doing in a different way, with the goal of doing it better. Ask others what they do or what they think you could do differently. Do some testing.

In most situations there are many different steps you can take. The key before you start testing is to create a baseline (snapshot of time, steps or even efficiency) for what you already do; this is the data you will use to determine if the new way is better or worse. Once you have a baseline, create a simple goal of what you want to be improved. Then take a step back and think of different ways to do it. Try it out and determine if the new way is better than the old.  

Then ask somebody you trust what he or she thinks. It’s good to get an outside opinion so you don’t get tunnel vision. Remember, “You can’t read the label from inside the bottle”.

I didn’t want to get technical on this post; I just want to get you thinking about testing at the simplest form. Take a stab at some basic things in your life or at your job, and if you want to have a discussion about how to do this in a much more advanced way give me a call and we’ll talk about it – I love that kind of thing.

Never Stop Improving

A website should never be "done". I take you inside the Hunch Free process to show you how we continue to improve our website. Make sure you're always looking to improve your site as well. Use tools like Google Analytics to get the truth about your site and your users.

All Hail Social Media!

Like a disease, it's taking over your entire body. There's no shaking it. There's no pushing it to the side. There's no way you can stop it. And quite honestly, you probably don't want to either.

Social media is quite possibly the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution, says Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics.

And the numbers he's researched to prove it are mind-boggling. Those with sensitive stomaches may wish to look away:

• Over 50% of the world's population is under 30 and 96% of Millennials have joined a social network.
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
• Social media has overtaken porn as the No. 1 activity on the Internet.
• YouTube is now the second largest search engine.
• Wikipedia has more than 15 million articles, studies showing it is now more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.
• There are over 200 million blogs.
• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily.
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment.

Are you on top of technology? Or has it trampled you in its takeover? Time to get on board.

The return on your investment is that your business will still exist in 5 years.