Author Archives: Doug

Tell me what you are good at

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You know what annoys me.

When I’m told “you need to improve on this or that” or you “need to work on this or that”  ’cause you’re not too good at it, “could do better”. If this has no direct impact on my life or business then  WHY? Like at school I aced at some subjects and was terrible at others. So teachers said  I needed to work on the others? I think not. Why work at the subjects I’m bad at and become mediocre. Isn’t it better to  work to my strengths and become an ace at what I’m good at.

EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE THING THEY ARE GOOD AT.

Work to your strengths. Forget about what you struggle with.

It’s the same in business. Managers need to wake up and place people where they excel. Amazingly this doesn’t always happen: Let me tell you one of my own experiences:

I worked in a bookshop in another life. Now one of my talents is that I can sell. I can get talking to people learn what they want and very quickly sell almost anything. On the shop Floor I sold the record amount of books in a single day. Then a little while later I  broke my own record.

I wasn’t very good at unpacking the books. In the manager’s eyes it was an area I needed to improve on. Funnily enough there was another person who was good at unpacking but “needed to improve on customer service”.

So I was placed in unpacking books and he was out selling. I became mediocre at unpacking books and he became mediocre at selling.

The company folded soon after I left.

BECAUSE the manager could not see that people are different and need to work to their strengths.

Moreover people enjoy doing what they are good at.  I enjoy meeting people, connecting with them and building websites that visibly enhance their online profile. And I like to think I’m pretty  good at it.  I work to my strengths. I no longer unpack many things, I’m not very good at it.

So the next time someone suggest you improve on something ask the question: WHY?  Let me excel at what I’m good at. That’s when you become great. Find out what you good at (here’s a clue, you enjoy doing it) and work at your passion. Find a job that involves what you’re good at. It could be number crunching, planning, selling, anything. I met a girl whose special skill was putting both legs behind her head. She made a living as a contortionist.

You may not be able to change straight away but at least start planning. It’s your life, you only get once chance. Do what you do best.

Do you think Usain Bolt tried for years to improve his marathon running. Or did he concentrate on what he does best?

And Mangers, for fucks sake, Place people where they can excel. Your employees are (by far) your most important asset. Let them  improve your business by letting them do what they do best, whatever that is.

What are you specials kills and how have you put them to good use?

 

SPEED (No not the film. Or the drug)

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But Website speed. How long does it take for your website to download? In today’s world a fast streamlined website is a must. If a user has to wait for more than about a second your site will be left and the user gone. Possibly forever.  This is not good. They will have missed the fabulous website you have (especially true if you used DP Web Development!)

So you need to optimise your website for speed.  Here are nine golden rules to follow.

  • Clean code.  The websites code should be as clean and error free as possible. There should be no unnecessary code being transferred as this will waste time and may even be acted upon.  A few obvious candidates spring to mind: are all the classes and ids still needed? Some may now be redundant and can be removed. Can your CSS be cleaned up at all? Remember white space is not needed in CSS.
  • Choose a good host. It’s true. The host you use does matter.  If you’re running on poor hardware using old versions of PHP (or other language) then your website will suffer. You need to pick a good host. Google the host thoroughly and make sure it meets your needs, but also has room to grow. As well as finding out which versions of PHP it is running it might also be worth considering the geographic location of the host. This may impact support services.
  • Image size. Images should be made as light as possible.  Wight is measure in KB.  Cropping and resizing should all be done yourself outside of the server before being uploaded as automatic server side scaling does not care about speed.  Also ask yourself does your website really need that huge image, what does it add. Images should only really be used if they serve a specific purpose. Do you really need 12 images on the home page?
  • Load StyleSheets first, before JavaScripts.  The CSS before any JavaScript. The reason for this I that while CSS is crucial for the page JavaScript is less so. The look of the page needs CSS to load while most of the JavaScript functionality isn’t.
  • Minify CSS and JavaScript. While it is a good idea to mash up all of your CSS files into on big file (no point in making lots of additional requests slowing you down). It is also a good idea to remove all white space and put the code on one line. This will make the code hard to read but the aim is to keep files small.
  • Use CSS Sprites.  For icons, logos and other images that may appear together on a regular basis it worth considering suing CSS Sprites.  This will keep your images all in one file thus increasing download speed: there will be fewer images to process.  Have a look at how to use sprites.
  • Avoid unnecessary external files.  Do you need to include a Facebook “like” on every page along with your Flickr account, YouTube Channel updates and all other such files? There may be a perfectly good reason for doing so especially in today’s interactive world. It each one will have an effect on the speed of your website. So keep an eye on this. Don’t keep your visitors waiting for files they do not need.
  • Cache! Utilise Cache to speed up your website Your CMS of choice may has this built in in which case all is well and good. It is worth checking and finding out what you can do.
  • Test the Speed of Your site. And don’t just use your own superfast broadband!  This can be a starting point. Use different machines (if you have access to them) for a more systematic approach there are online tools that can help. One such site is http://getfirebug.com. There are others out there and a Google search will help.

What are your tips on speeding up a website? Is it really necessary now that Broadband is becoming ever more widespread? Do mere seconds really make a difference?