As a small business owner in Canada that sends emails to their customers you'd better get ready for CASL. No, that's not a sexual disorder, it's the government's proposed Canadian Anti Spam Legislation. It also stands for, The Clowns in Ottawa Have Gotten It Wrong Once More. Rather than implement similar legislation already hammered out by the EU and the USA, Canada is not only late to the game our government seems to want to control the Internet.
The EU and USA regs take a targeted approach to the problem of business spam. Whereas the CASL will make it illegal to send any commercial electronic message without the express consent of the recipient. It does not matter that they are your customer. It does not matter that when they signed on to your service that they checked a box indicating that they agreed to your service level agreement, which gave you permission to email them. It doesn't matter that every email you send has an opt-out link. From now on you must get EXPRESS permission to email them. You will need to go back to ALL your customers that you communicate with and get them to reaffirm their desire to be contacted by you. And if you don't the penalties are up to a million dollars per email transgression.
I'm sorry for being a sleep at switch here. When I heard about CASL back when it was published in 2010, I thought, “Wow, more CRTC crap. Who cares? Where's my coffee?” But after seeing a recent presentation by James Minns of Shibley Righten, I became overwhelmingly concerned about the affect on our business and the amount of time necessary to make sure we're adhering to the legislation if it is passed under its present guise.
Did you know that it will be illegal for your salespeople to send a casual, “How'r you doing John?” email to a customer if you have a link to a commercial enterprise in it? “Cathy, you gotta see the new shoes at David's.” If you put a link to David's shoes, you will be toasted.
We are law abiding citizens here in Canada. What if we want to correct the situation? Well, you'll be barred from communicating to your customers on your email list because even sending an email to ask for permission will be illegal. What are we expected to do, go door-to-door? Send snail mail? Oh wait, Canada Post are not required to stop sending us garbage to our mail boxes. Why is that? Perhaps because they are a crown corporation and the government makes money off the practice? Stop Paul, please don't be so cynical.
If you're a small business with a mailing list or even if you email customers regularly, read the legislation. It is ridiculous in its present form. While the law has been passed, it's not in force yet. Contact your MP. They will know NOTHING about it, of course. They will be happy to send you a form letter thanking you for your support in the next election, but do it anyway. Even better? Contact your lawyer.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
I love Google Now. It gives my iPhone 4 Siri-like capabilities that Apple chose to give only to 4s and 5 users. Was I a bit miffed at Apple? Sure. The same goes for the much maligned Apple maps app, but only for the reason that turn-by-turn with voice is available only for 4s and 5. Once again Google stepped into the breech and delivered turn-by-turn when Apple wouldn't. This proved that the iPhone 4 platform was fully capable of offering such amenities and that Apple were money-grubbing shit-heads.
Google could have kept their tech to themselves releasing it only on Android devices but they didn't. They have given us iPhone 4 users a better iPhone than Apple wanted to give us. Thank you Google. So, why did they do this? Was it because they are a company of geeks that they just wanted to show off their cool stuff to a wider audience? Was it because there are people at Google that love Apple products more than Microsoft's? Was it because Sergey Brin thinks Steve Jobs was a god and wishes there wasn't so much antagonism between Google and Apple? Was it to introduce Apple users to the world of Android and make switchers out of them? Was it a way to extend the Adwords platform?
I think the answer to the above questions is all of the above. What, as small business owners, can we learn from this? I'll call it, “Help yourself by helping your competition.” Why would we do this? As you can see from the above example, what Google has done has made me feel good about Google. It makes me even more pissed off at Apple, which is also good for Google.
Let's contrast this with Microsoft's Apple strategy which has always felt grudging and half-hearted. Even though their latest version of the Office Suite is actually their best, I had abandoned Office for LibreOffice a while ago because of the dreck Microsoft was putting out for the Mac. Maybe they did this because there was little hope of getting a Mac user to switch to Windows, but I think that was short-sighted. Contrast this with the goodwill Google is generating even though Android and iPhone are fiercely competitive platforms. Just read the user posts. It's almost “thermo nuclear” as someone famous once said.
Who are your competition? Can you do something for them and their customers in exchange for some name recognition? Be altruistic. Don't ask for anything in return. Make someone's life better. If you recall the movie, Miracle on 34th Street, one of the shocking scenes was Santa, while working at Macy's department store, told a child to go to Gimbels department store because the toy was cheaper there. The management was in an uproar, but then a customer came up and told them that they were so impressed that they would do such a thing that she would always shop at Macy's.
We've always followed this philosophy. We know Your Web Department is not for everyone and when people ask about using YWD, it only takes a few questions to realize whether we are a good fit. We'll not only turn down the business we'll tell them where to get the most appropriate solution. This happened fairly recently when a woman from a church in Texas wanted us to take over their site. I realized that the issues they had could be handled by their ISP, but they didn't know what questions to ask. I told her that they didn't need us and gave them them the ISP info. She said, in a wonderful Texas drawl, that she had never encountered a company like ours and that she would have the entire congregation pray for us.
Now I can't recall any new business coming from that, but having God on your side couldn't hurt. However, I can attest to new business coming from this strategy, but most importantly, retaining existing customers. And let's not call it a 'strategy'. It makes it coldhearted and remote. You should be doing this because it's the right thing to do. You must want to do this. It must be part of your corporate DNA. Every person in your company should be allowed to help the competition if it makes sense for the customer. It will also make your employees feel good about working for you. That sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
A new entertainment series is bypassing all traditional broadcast mediums. @SummerBreak is going to be delivered over Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram. Why am I writing about this here? Well, I'm not just a web guy, business guy, owner guy I'm also video, writing and broadcast guy. I was head of TV Comedy at CBC for a few years. Back in 1992 I was trying to encourage the Corporation to digitize their video library for the emerging CD ROM (yes, I know it's dead) revolution. The powers that be thought it was a waste of time and nothing was going to come of this new-fangled digital thing. They were sort of right because I was, frankly, too far ahead of the curve. Is @SummerBreak too far ahead of the curve?
It's going to follow a bunch of high school seniors from Los Angeles for eight weeks before they go to college. The series is going to happen live 24/7 as tweets and Instagram photos and I assume YouTube videos, though you can also Tweet 6 seconds of videos. Hey, isn't this what everyone is doing and sharing now? How is this going to be more interesting? They say it's going to be unscripted. Is it too far ahead of the curve?
Part of the fun of social media is that it's spontaneous. How spontaneous is this really going to be? We're comfortable seeing scripted content on YouTube but on Twitter, Instagram, etc? I don't know. Those mediums are all about not being fake. Yes, they claim it's going to be unscripted. Really? Why would that be interesting?
This doesn't mean they shouldn't try. There is a real production company behind it with bags of cash and I'm sure they'll promote the hell out of it. That will bring traffic but will it guarantee success? There are many stories of great ideas that were just too far ahead of the curve. Time Warner spent millions trying to get video on demand working back in the '90s. Total failure. Now we have the Internet and Netflix. The confluence of the Internet, ubiquitous high speed access, video compression codecs and cloud computing has generally solved the video on demand puzzle. Plus we can view it all in HD, which the old Time Warner experiment could not handle even with a dedicated local network. But this evolved over many years. The original idea wasn't bad, just the timing of it.
Being an entertainment guy I'm fascinated by these experiments. And even if I don't think they're going to work, someone has to do it. And someone always will. There are many points of failure when doing an entertainment product. Perhaps they will hit on the perfect distribution medium, but the product sucks. If it fails, what are they going to blame? I hated YouTube webisodes because the early ones I had seen were awful so I just assumed the webisode distribution system was awful. Lately, I've seen some great webisode series that are hugely popular. It's clear that breaking the tyranny of the time slot is a good thing.
The take away in all of this is that your website is not an island. There are so many things going on between mobile, social media and video that it does not make sense any more to think that you can just build a website and leave it. At the very minimum you need to participate in the health of your site and see what else is going on out there so you'll be aware of anything that might be useful to you.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
Okay WordPress the gloves are off. Once again one of your pasty, zombie surrogates came after one of our customers. Your surrogate offered to 'host' our customer's site for 'only' $19/month instead of the $49/month we were charging them. So, is that the best you can do, offer a measly $360 a year savings? People spend more than that in one month at Starbucks.
There are any range of services out there if you want a website. Most domain hosting companies will let you drop your own html into their system for free. Many offer incredibly awful DIY web tools. There are services that charge several hundreds of dollars a month. The point is not cost, but value and frankly the difference between free and $588 a year is zero if your website is an important business tool. Hopefully you're planning on making more than $600 a year.
Our customer was nice enough to call us and ask why YWD is different from WordPress, which I'm happy to elucidate for you now:
When someone asks for WordPress it's usually code for, "I want a cheap website". Now, the truth is you can build really impressive websites with WP. No question about it. However, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you pick a template and have no interest in altering it then it truly is a good, cheap solution. But, and there is always a but, if you want to change the template then you will have to do html programming and maybe even javascript if your changes go deeper, or the template requires jQuery tweaks. "Wait a second," you say, "I'm not a programmer." If you're not then you will have to hire a programmer to make these changes and suddenly WordPress is no longer free. Charges for these changes can vary from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Your Web Department is a 'no-code' system. That is why only YWD can offer the free LiveBuild™ website building service (fresh-not from templates).
Next. Maintaining the Your Web Department system and providing customers website support is all we do. It's what we do for a living. You can always reach us for technical questions, SEO questions, even questions on how to make your website do more for your business. As long as you are a YWD customer we will be there for you. When someone builds a WP site for you after you've paid them their done. They might entertain a few questions after the build is finished but any more and you become an annoyance. The company you are now paying $19 a month to is just hosting your WordPress site. They are not offering support for it. You can search the forums for help... wait, you're in business. You're trying to make a living. Do you have time to dive into geekland? And what if you want to make a design update four, six, nine months after? You will have to track down that programmer and if you're lucky enough to find them you will have to pay them for the changes. These changes are mostly free on YWD.
A cool new thing has arrived for websites. You want to add that cool new thing to your website. Once again, in the WP scenario, if you are not a programmer you will have to find someone to make these updates. At Your Web Department we are keeping up with the Internet so you won't have to. And all these feature updates are free to all our customers.
People who offer their WP services do so because that's all they know. Wait, you're thinking, isn't that what we do push YWD? In all honesty, if someone calls and they are a candidate for another system, or if all they are looking for is a few static pages then we will happily convey those alternative options and even where they can get it done. We are a service company. The Your Web Department platform is only the conduit through which we offer that service.
Your Web Department is easier to manage. We know because we have WP sites and we hear it from our customers. I won't get into the details here but trust me. YWD has much more powerful tools to manage the day-to-day updates without coding or having to upload specialized modules.
So, these are just a few things that make YWD different from WordPress. If the above are important to you then you are a great candidate for our system. And, by-the-way, the customer who called us, thought so too.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
What a great quote. We are all curious. When you search for something on the Internet you are curious about that thing; how long to cook that roast, who was the lead actor in the movie The Blob? (Steve McQueen, btw.) What idiot did Justin Bieber lend his Ferrari to now?
We all want our websites to be found on the Internet, but what questions are people asking to find you? What kind of result should they expect when they do find you? When you search for how to cook a Beef Wellington you get an ANSWER. What answers do people find on your website, or are they getting just your blah, blah, blah? It's a subtle difference but I think a powerful one and something I don't think most small business owners put much thought into.
When a business invests in SEO, or search engine optimization, they are mostly concerned about Google rankings, getting found on that coveted first page and that people will find your site. And that it seems is where it ends. As long as they click on that link, paid or otherwise, you're fine, but think about someone searching for a car part or a mehndi design they are looking for an answer and not more questions.
If your business has a process, then maybe that is the answer they are looking for and not how many years your president has been, well, president. It doesn't matter what you do, they know that already. That's why their at your bloody site. (SIDE NOTE: Hopefully your home page confirms that they've come to the right place. That's an issue of confirmation, not question answering.) Customers want to know how you do what you do. Are you providing them this information on your website?
Pretend you're a customer, ask Google a question that pertains to your business. Ask it the form of a question. Let's say you have a mule clipping service. “How can I get my mules groomed?” Hopefully your site comes up in the results. Click on the link. What did you get, marketing nonsense, or an answer to your question? In the case of the mule clipping service there could be a video on how you treat the animals, wash first and then lovingly groom them before giving them a pomade brushing. Or a flowchart of the process. I'm a big advocate of Show, don't Tell.
In conclusion, make sure you are answering your customers' questions and not satisfied with just answering your own.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
One of the reasons we developed Your Web Department was that we didn't like the fact that many people were being held hostage by web developers and that it should be easy to update and manage one's own website for gosh sakes. The other thing we really work hard to do is provide great support and not just technical support, if customers have questions on how to make their website better or how to make their business work better on the Internet, we're happy to tell them. If we have the answer you can ask the question.
A great reward for us is when one of our customers says something nice about us either in print or in video. It's especially nice when it's unsolicited.
Rona Birenbaum is a customer of ours. Her website, www.caringforclients.com has been on Your Web Department for several years and has gone through several iterations as her business evolved. So, have a listen to this interview about Rona's financial planning business. Great advice and a nice plug for YWD later in the video.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
As a small business owner in Canada that sends emails to their customers you'd better get ready for CASL. No, that's not a sexual disorder, it's the government's proposed Canadian Anti Spam Legislation. It also stands for, The Clowns in Ottawa Have Gotten It Wrong Once More. Rather than implement similar legislation already hammered out by the EU and the USA, Canada is not only late to the game our government seems to want to control the Internet.
A new entertainment series is bypassing all traditional broadcast mediums. 
Okay WordPress the gloves are off. Once again one of your pasty, zombie surrogates came after one of our customers. Your surrogate offered to 'host' our customer's site for 'only' $19/month instead of the $49/month we were charging them. So, is that the best you can do, offer a measly $360 a year savings? People spend more than that in one month at Starbucks.
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