Instigator Blog

At Small Business Trends John Wyckoff writes about the importance of having clean bathrooms in small retail stores.

I say “hooray!” and “Yes!”

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’m a fan of the bathroom. It’s a sanctuary for most men. Particularly with reading material in it. The article is mostly about the fact that women will refuse to shop at a store (using car dealerships as an example) if the bathrooms aren’t up to snuff, but from my perspective I feel the same way, both as a guy and a father of a young child still in diapers.

Here are my tips for small (and big!) retailers when it comes to bathrooms:

* Have reading material. Why not? Put a little magazine stand at the entrance and toss in your glossy catalogs. I’ll happily look at your wares while sitting on the toilet.

* Have paper towels. I realize that paper towels aren’t as environmentally friendly as drying your hands with hot air, but the hot air takes too long. I’ve just read about a great sale you have, I don’t want to sit there rubbing my wet hands under hot air, I want to shop! Offer both, let people pick.

* Have a changing table. They’re actually called baby changing stations and they’re not expensive. If you have the space for them, I’d highly recommend adding this to the men’s and women’s washrooms. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a kid with a poopy diaper and nowhere to change him! A few weeks ago my family went to a restaurant and had that exact dilemma. We had to change our son in the back of our car. Now, between that restaurant and the one down the street that serves equally good food at equally fair prices…which one will I pick?

* Disinfectant soap. Instead of that regular, pink goup that spews all over the place, I’d recommend adding dispensers for disinfectant soap or spray. This is the kind of stuff you can rub on without having to dry it off. You see it a lot in Toronto where they had the SARS crisis awhile ago.

Have you ever heard about the WizMark? Bathroom advertising taken to a whole new level. I’m not quite sure I can recommend this to anyone, but you can have a look yourself.

In the meantime, what this is really all about is businesses taking care of their customers. Clean bathrooms boils down to good customer service. ‘Nuff said, I have to use the loo.

[tags]customer service, respecting clients, business, clean washrooms[/tags]

I do a lot of surfing around, particularly looking for other blogs of interest. Very often I’m led to blogs from others that I read regularly. It’s not uncommon when I surf around to find a good percentage of blogs that are “broken”. What do I mean by broken? Most of the time this means that the layout is broken in Internet Explorer. The most common problem is that the sidebar (which most blogs have) is pushed way to the bottom of the page after the last post. Why is this happening?

What’s Usually The Problem?

I’m not an HTML/CSS expert, but there’s a few common reasons I’ve seen: 1. There’s an image in the posts that’s too big. 2. There’s an image or string of text in the sidebar that’s too big. Text is a problem if it won’t wrap (i.e. a long URL for example) 3. There’s a very small CSS/HTML bug in your blog template. I’ve seen the exact same problem while using Firefox, although it’s less common. I rarely use Safari on the Mac at work (that’s the 3rd logo above in case you weren’t sure), but I would expect there are quite a few problems on people’s blogs in Safari when they’re strictly PC’ers.

My Conclusions

This leads to two conclusions: 1. Most bloggers ONLY test their blog out with ONE browser. 2. Even those that test with both browsers RARELY do so when they make a “small change” to their template. Both of these things can be big problems. Most of the time when I see a problem on someone’s blog I’ll email them about it, but I guarantee you that not many people will do that, instead they’ll just leave and surf elsewhere. And you’ve lost a potential reader, or worse, a potential customer. There’s a ton of different browsers out there, each of which has a variety of versions. It makes it near-impossible for a non-designer/techie to keep up-to-date and make sure things are OK. Two more things to think about: 1. Even basic blog templates may have problems. Just because you’re using an existing blog template and only made a few changes doesn’t mean your blog will be OK in multiple browsers. 2. As competition for traffic heats up, blog templates are getting more complex and sophisticated. That also means they’ll be more prone to error.

What Can Be Done About It?

First off, here’s a list of the most important browsers based on general usage statistics that exist out there on browser popularity, and my own experience:

- Internet Explorer 6.x

- Firefox 1.5 (I’m not sure how much older you want to go here - anyone?) *

- Internet Explorer 5.5

- Safari 2.0.x (You may want to look at Safari 1.3.x as well)

* If you’re compliant with Firefox 1.5 (or older versions of Firefox) then more than likely you’ll be OK with other Mozilla-based browsers (Camino, etc.) which will probably only make up a very small percentage of your traffic anyway.

Secondly, here’s some things you can do to help yourself:

1. Test using different browsers. At this point this should be obvious. If you’re on a PC, you can at least test on Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you’re on a Mac, then you can easily test on Safari and Firefox.

2. Use an online service for testing your blog’s browser compatibility.

There’s two that I know of — but I’m sure there are others. If you know of another one please comment or email me.

* browsershots.org - free, but may take up to 50+ minutes to get your screenshots

* BrowserCam - free (for a short period of time/trial-basis), but apparently you can get the screenshots immediately.

3. Get help from others. If you know someone that’s on a Mac, and you don’t have access to one, then ask them periodically to check, or ask them to check after you make significant changes. And vice versa. It only takes a few seconds to check someone’s site and tell them if it’s OK or not.

Yesterday, I posted Get Rich or Die Tryin’ which was inspired by Darren Rowse’s group writing project on blogging goals.

Two of my goals included: to be creative and to find new business opportunities.

Today, because of my blogging, those two goals were achieved. (I should point out that you don’t stop achieving these goals just because you achieved them at one point in time…)

My blogging leads me to look for other blogs of interest and other likeminded people. Doing so led me to Young Money Blog. The most recent post there was about the author, Dennis, joining a relatively new blog network, Mind Petals.

I took a look at Mind Petals which is a blog network primarily targeting young entrepreneurs on niche topics. I looked at some of the members’ blogs, was impressed with my quick reading, so I sent the owner, David Askaripour, an email.

He responded almost immediately and we started chatting on AIM.

The resulting discussion was great. And it helped me achieve the two goals I mentioned above. First, I had the opportunity to be creative by brainstorming ideas with David on targeting the college market. Second, I had the opportunity to find new business opportunities because there’s some obvious synergies between what David and I are doing in a few areas. We’re not hopping into bed just yet, but we opened a door today by getting online, chatting, and sharing ideas.

Actually, my first goal, to generate exposure for IGotNewsForYou.com the business, was also achieved.

All in all it was a positive experience, and a positive example of how blogging - and as an extension reaching out to others who blog - can help you be successful.

Jumping in, late on the scene with Darren Rowse’s latest writing project on blogging goals.

I’ve thought about it for a few days, but my hands refused to type what my brain was thinking. Maybe that’s because my brain was jumbled up with too many thoughts. So, I cleared my mind, had a shot of Jagermeister (which is one of my new favourite drinks thanks to a recent stag party and wedding), and went to work.

My blogging goals are:

* To generate exposure for IGotNewsForYou.com the business. With a minimal advertising budget (ok, there isn’t one right now, squeezing money out of my partners is harder than getting water from a rock), and no real expertise at PR (any PR people out there reading this? I know you are!), I turned to blogging. I started the blog in January 2006, four months before launching the business, specifically to lead up to the launch. And now I continue to blog as a way of bringing attention to the business itself, hoping people will come to the blog, read it, enjoy it, and then move on to spending money at IGotNewsForYou.com.

* To be creative. Blogging affords me the opportunity to express myself in a creative way. To share my sense of humor, wit and sarcasm with the world. To think outloud in a creative way.

* To build relationships. Blogging has to be one of the best ways of building relationships with people that you otherwise wouldn’t have met. Or certainly not as easily. I’ve talked to dozens of people because of the blog, and formed what I would consider friendships. Those relationships, irrespective of what happens to IGotNewsForYou, will survive and prosper.

* To become famous. Who doesn’t want to be famous? Ok, some people prefer anonymity, but I can’t help myself. I’ve got a massive ego that needs stroking. (Did I just admit that? Wow.)

* To find new business opportunities. I’ve always dreamt of building more and more businesses (think: serial entrepreneur + massive ego…there I go again!) and through blogging, expressing myself creatively and building relationships I think I’ll also find new opportunities to create businesses, help others with theirs, and so on.

* To learn. I’ve been involved with the Internet and web development/software development for 10+ years but I hadn’t really thrown myself into the social Internet, social media, and a lot of the evolving things going on. Blogging gives me that chance. And, it’s not just about Web 2.0 or funky buzzwords; I also want to learn more about marketing, PR and entrepreneurship - so that’s a very clear blogging goal.

For me, it boils down to this:

Blogging creates opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

There’s a lot wrapped up in that one sentence, and “opportunities” (like “goals”) can be different for everyone, but my ultimate goal is to create opportunities I couldn’t have otherwise had without blogging. Those opportunities may be precisely listed in my goals above or they may come out of left field. In fact, I suspect some opportunities will come out of left field. That’s the beauty of blogging. Lots of people can read your stuff, you never know everyone that’s reading it, and you never know what you might say that might connect with someone and create an opportunity.

* This post begs a follow-up (maybe several follow-ups) in the future about whether I’m meeting my goals or not…so stay tuned.

David Parmet at Marketing Begins At Home writes a worthwhile post titled Bad Reputation.

It’s important for two reasons:

1. The use of the term “asshat”. I’d never heard this term before, but being the industrious fellow that I am, I looked it up. (I used GoodSearch.com too, because I said I would. And the money donated by that search went to CHASA.)

Of course, the Internet is rife with information about “asshat”:

* Asshat, the official site for the best word ever
* Instapundit uses the term “asshat”
* Wikipedia

On a side note, I prefer the term “assbag”(which interestingly enough doesn’t have as much information online.)

2. It points out the absolute stupidity in irritating a client that’s leaving you. Clients leave, it happens to everyone. Yes, it’s even happened to me. There, I admitted it. But the worst possible thing you can do is piss them off on the way out. Why bother? Sure, you may be disappointed, hurt or insulted. You might even be sad. Most likely you’re just ticked that someone else beat you out for their business. But regardless, there’s no valid reason to tick off a client that’s leaving.

If anything you should be even more courteous when they leave. Do everything in your power to be friendly and helpful. Leave as good a feeling as you can with them, before they leave. You never know when your paths might cross again, and I can guarantee you that even if a client is leaving, if it’s on good (or great) terms, they’ll reward you for it in the long run, be it with testimonials, references or even coming back down the road.

Thank them for their business and wish them the best of luck. Leave the door open for future communication and always express your willingness to help out and be there for them.

Don’t be an asshat…or an assbag…be smart when a client leaves.

[tags]asshat, assbag, client relationships, dave parmet, customer service[/tags]