There are ways to have meetings be more productive, or even avoid them entirely, even if you aren’t the one calling them. We can still use the chart (and the HBR.org source article)  as we’ll be applying similar methods. More accurately, we’ll try to get the meeting caller to apply them, or allow you to use them.

Depending on your relationship with the meeting caller, sending them the flowchart in a Reply All captioned “do this first and get back to me” is probably not a good strategy. Let’s look for ways to present the flowchart questions differently.

Have You Thought Through This Situation?

Again, I wouldn’t recommend sending that to your client or boss when they ask for a meeting. You’ll have to do some detective work. If the meeting has a solid agenda, you can see what’s up for discussion. You can take each point and run it through the flowchart questions.

If there’s no agenda and no clear purpose for the meeting, then ask for an agenda or clarification about what they want to cover at the meeting. Remind people that you are asking so that you can be prepared for the meeting – don’t make it look like a challenge to their decision to have a meeting.

By asking questions so that you can prepare, yes, you’ll be able to prepare, but you will also force the meeting caller to think about the situation, which may make for a more efficient meeting.

Do You Need Outside Input to Make Progress?

Looking at the agenda, is there anything you can more or less solve and explain without having to discuss it in real time with everyone at the meeting? Note it for the next step.

Does Moving Forward Require a Real-Time Conversation?

So there are some points on the agenda you think can be handled outside the meeting. Is it best explained by email, or do you need to do a phone call, video conference, or screenshare?

If people call a meeting, they’ll usually be more satisfied by a call or one on one meeting than an email.

Does this Require a Meeting?

Anything left that people couldn’t cover on a call? So you might need a meeting… but there might still be ways to make it shorter, or at least have fewer people there for the whole thing.

Does anything on the agenda look like it really only requires a subset of the whole invite list? Consider suggesting to move it to the beginning or end of the meeting, or even breaking it off into a separate meeting. That way, the other people who don’t need to be at that part of the meeting can be productively working on something else. And present it that way: “Can we talk about Jane and Anurag’s project first so that they can leave and have more time to work on it before the weekend,” will make fewer waves than “Can we talk about Jane and Anurag’s project first so that they can leave and we don’t waste their time?”

We might still have a meeting to go to, but at least it will be a shorter meeting, and we have already begun to prepare for it. Over time, we might even get meeting callers to start using these methods without coaxing.

What tricks do you use to get out of meetings? Share them in the comments! I’d prefer if you shared productivity enhancing methods like the ones above, but if you have a hilarious anecdote about going to absurd lengths to shirk responsibility, I won’t stop you.

Finally, the flow chart got into my Twitter feed via Christopher Berry, who is a fountain of brilliant tweets on data, organizational behavior, election behavior, etc., so go follow him.

Summary: How to Get People to Call Fewer Meetings

1. If the meeting has a solid agenda, you can see what’s up for discussion.
2. If there’s no agenda and no clear purpose for the meeting, ask for an agenda or clarification about what they want to cover. Remind people that you are asking so that you can be prepared – don’t make it look like a challenge to their decision to have a meeting.
3. Looking at the agenda or topic, is there anything you can solve and explain without having to discuss it in real time with everyone at the meeting? Note it for the next step.
4. Is it best explained by email, or do you need to do a phone call, video conference, or screenshare? If people call a meeting, they’ll usually be more satisfied by a call or one on one meeting than an email..
5. Does anything on the agenda look like it really only requires a subset of the whole invite list? Consider suggesting to move it to the beginning or end of the meeting, or even breaking it off into a separate meeting. That way, the people who don’t need to be at that part of the meeting can be productively working on something else.

The post Get Other People to Call Fewer Meetings appeared first on Informed Iteration.

Knowing That “Done” Is Better Than Perfect

Like spiritual mantras or Buddhist Koans, you can read and repeat that phrase a lot, but it takes a while for it to click, and a while longer to start applying it.

Starting out, it’s easy to obsess over everything being just right. It doesn’t have to be about your website. There are so many decisions to be made regarding a new business that determining which ones call for extensive research and thought, and which just need to be good enough, is where a lot of the effort goes.

The first site had text graphics I made myself and an image rotation that was actually rather elegant. It also took me a long time, and I found out I had a lot to learn if I was ever going to do graphics work efficiently. This one has a stock image I feel represents the idea of something starting, and then using a mathematically governed procedure to grow. I also think it’s a nice picture. It took me a couple hours to find and crop, instead of days doing something I find frustrating.

If you have always had high standards, been a bit of a perfectionist, called demanding by others, etc, good enough for us is probably good enough for the people visiting your website. You can always improve it later.

Launch Websites When Ready, Not When Done

It seems obvious to most people that something has to be done before it is suitable for public use, but websites are a very different beast. The revamp I just launched isn’t done: there is supposed to be a portfolio page, there are no links to social media or sharing tools, it hasn’t been optimized for speed, and on and on. But, my old site wasn’t even mobile responsive

The only thing you need done before launching is something better than what you already have. So, I launched, and I’ll do that stuff when I get to it. Now, there are obviously economies of scale to be had in building a website, so if you can save hundreds/thousands of dollars by waiting a couple weeks, and you aren’t sure about the difference the new site will make, go ahead and wait. People in my industry can help discuss these kinds of things to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.

Try making lists of your needs and wants from the website, or if you are doing an RFP, be clear about your priorities. Sometimes it’s easier to include lower priority items while addressing higher priority ones, and sometimes you can get a significant price reduction by delaying features, without having to pay more to do more on their own later. The better a good provider knows what is important to you, the better they can recommend a phased approach where appropriate.
I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions, about the website or about getting better things sooner than perfect things later.

The post What I’ve Learned About Small Business Websites appeared first on Informed Iteration.

Subsequent posts were delayed by the very severe illness, culminating in the passing, of my father.

Alex Amprimoz’ Development Legacy

(not to be confused with Alex Amprimoz’ Legacy Development)

My dad (pictured at left) was a French professor at Brock University here in Niagara, but loved computers with a rare passion. I grew up in a house full of computers, any one of which would often be spread out in pieces across the dining room table, much to my mother’s chagrin. Dad went as far as picking up a degree in computer science, then doing IT consulting on the side while still teaching French.

During my last conversation with him I made it a point to tell him about my getting involved with Software Niagara because he’d be happy to hear about it: not just my being involved, but that something like that was taking place locally.

Being a Niagara SEO Consultant Can Be a Little Lonely

Software Niagara is a grassroots organization looking to unite and foster the Niagara development community.  Their first event, a Democamp, took place last September, and was absolutely great. Seeing that kind of creativity in my own backyard got me very excited: I work predominantly online and most of my clients and collaborators don’t live nearby. Seeing a chance to help build a tech savvy community locally I decided to volunteer.

Their next event is this evening. I know, it’s short notice. But if you can’t make it tonight, you can come next Monday, or any Monday thereafter. Software Niagara will be doing a Coworking Night every Monday at the Starbucks on Lake St. from 7pm onwards. Grab your laptop and go work at Starbucks, like many of us do anyway. But this way you aren’t doing it alone.

Coworking Niagara

Software Niagara isn’t the only opportunity to cowork in Niagara. There is also the (aptly named) Coworking Niagara group, which meets from noon until four every Wednesday at the Mahtay Café on St. Paul St. Again, grab your laptop and come meet other tech, creative, and entrepreneurial types while you work.

I’ve been meeting with this group for the better part of this year. What started off as a chance to do a bit of networking developed the kind of business friendships that have led to a software joint venture and several collaborative opportunities. Perhaps more importantly, the friends I’ve made there have been tremendously supportive through the loss I’ve recently experienced.

If you work in an office you have that face to face team presence. As an SEO consultant working online I don’t get that with many projects, so it’s great to have a group to be social with while still getting some work done.

Uhh, What’s Coworking?

Oh, sorry. I haven’t really touched on that have I. Here’s the explanation from the Coworking Niagara Event page:

“Coworking is a work structure where freelancers and other independent, creative professionals get together in a shared space for the purpose of being more productive, generating new ideas and solving knowledge work problems.

Coworking is not a networking event, it’s not a support group (although those things happen). It’s a place and a structure to help you get your work done and produce a higher quality output.”

As always, thanks for reading: even more than usual as today’s post had a more personal and less informative flavor. The next post will likely get us back to Google Analytics setup. In the meantime, I’ll see you at a coworking event, unless you’d rather leave a comment or get in touch through social media.

Where do you like to get work done?

The post Loss, Legacy, and Local Software appeared first on Informed Iteration.

Head to https://accounts.google.com which will send you to the screen pictured below, or right to any Google Account you might currently be logged in on. If you use Gmail as already, I’d recommend opening a different browser, as that will save you a bunch of logging in and out of accounts later. If that’s not possible for some reason, click on your portrait or email address in the top right to get the pop up with the Sign Out button and reach the login/create account screen.

Then, click the Sign Up button top right or the link in the text at the left to get started. Give the new account an easy to remember and recognize name, like datatools.yourbusinessname@gmail.com

I use a gmail account because they are free, and as a core Google product, if ever there is a  really serious problem with gmail, there will probably be a big problem with many of it’s other products, including Analytics and Web Master Tools, anyway. Using a Google Apps for Business address would cost you 60 bucks a year, and creates one more link in the chain for notification email, in that your registrar needs to be getting your DNS right.

Two Tips for Making Your Google Accounts

I’m not going to go through the whole process of setting up a Google Account, but I will offer two points of advice:

1) Unless your business has been around for more than 18 years, overcome the temptation to use the founding date of your business as a birthdate. You have to be 18 to open a Google Account, and if you submit your form with a birthday that makes you younger than that, Google will put something in your browser that will keep you from making the account until you clear your cache and cookies from them (or use a different browser).

2) Set up forwarding from this account to your main email account. You could add your main account to the notification lists for Analytics and Webmaster Tools, but that is two things you’d have to do instead of one. And Webmaster Tools in particular will send out important emails, like if there appears to be something wrong with your site as far as Google is concerned, and you don’t want to miss those. To set up forwarding, click the Gear button in the top right (just under your email address), then Settings, then the Forwarding and POP/IMAP pseudo-tab, and finally, the Add a forwarding address button.

After entering and confirming the target address in the two subsequent popups, you’ll need to verify the connection to your main email account. The easiest way to do that is to log into (or switch browsers to) your main email account, and click the link in the verification email that Gmail sends there. Then, you need to log back in (or switch browsers back) to the new account, head back to the Forwarding screen in the settings, select the button next to Forward a copy of incoming mail to…, and click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.  Don’t forget this notoriously easily to forget step.

Next Step

Congratulations: the new Google Account is made, forwarding email to your everyday account, and ready to create Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts for your website. We can take care of that while we are still logged in to the new account. It’s crucial we get that right or this whole extra account hoop we jumped through will be a waste. We’ll get to the Analytics setup part in the next post, see you there!

The post Getting Google Going: Making a Gmail Account to Manage Analytics and Tools appeared first on Informed Iteration.

Or we can do it right the first time!

You are going to need a new Google Account. No, you can’t use the one you already have.

Don’t worry, we’ll set up the accounts so you can do whatever you want from whichever Google account you want,  we just need a new one to set it up. If you want to take me on faith just wait for my next post and we’ll get going on the actual setup. Those wanting to know why can read on.

Don’t Mix Email and Data

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools (and AdWords for that matter) all give some kind of special consideration to which Google Account originally set up the tools for a given website. With AdWords it’s a real pain, if not impossible, to change the main email on an account because Google doesn’t want people driving up bids with fake accounts, but Analytics and Webmaster Tools have more subtle issues. They boil down to two problems: giving people access to your email account, and giving people access to tool data they shouldn’t have.

We all know you shouldn’t share logins for things, but sometimes it can save so much trouble, often in an emergency, that you end up doing it. With a separate Google Account only used for technical stuff related to your website, giving login access to someone helping you with the site or its marketing becomes a much smaller privacy threat. If it’s also the account you use for email, you are risking information they don’t need to see at all.

What if you already have a Google Account you use just for tools related to another website? You should still set up a new one.

Don’t Mix Data From All Your Websites

Ok, to be honest, there are some exceptions where it makes more sense to put several websites on the same Google Account. This almost always has to do with the websites being different parts of a single online presence though. If your multiple websites or domains are different subdomains, translations, localizations, or what have you, related to one business, it often makes more sense to have them all under the same Google Analytics Account. That’s a horse of a different color though, and complicates setup considerably.

For now, we’ll assume your website has only one domain tied to it.

If you have websites for different businesses or organizations, then those should be added to Analytics and Webmaster Tools from separate Google Accounts. Here’s why: even if, as a savvy owner of several online businesses, you never ever find yourself giving out your login info because you can easily add users if anyone else needs to get in, there isn’t much granularity in how you can set up their permissions. In Google Analytics, if you need to add someone as an Admin (which, if you’ve hired an analytics consultant, you’ll probably do), they’ll then be able to see all of the websites in the account.

It’s not as big a deal as having people see all your email, but if you are involved in partnerships or try to sell a business, it can become a massive source of confusion and confidentiality issues.

Webmaster Tools has its own way of attaching itself to the account that connected it. Removing it can remove some, or even all, of the other site owners you added since, taking valuable data with them.

I Don’t Need to Have a Separate Account Because…

…It’s just you running the website and you just have the one business and won’t be starting another website, ever, and are somehow sure of this? Maybe because you aren’t super interested in online stuff and just needed the site for your established offline business? That increases the likelihood that you’ll one day need help with your website, and possibly share a login to the related tools – all the more reason for a separate account. You can use it as the contact account for your hosting plan as well and keep everything for your website in one place.

Conversely, the more sophisticated a tool user you are, the more likely you are to have several websites, and to take on a variety of collaborators, and perhaps sell websites. Obviously not having full flexibility in who sees what of your Analytics data won’t be ideal as your online empire grows. So one business to one account works for you too.

And don’t worry, we’ll set up email forwards and admin access for your regular account so that the next time you have to see this extra one we made, it will because you need it for something, and you’ll be glad you’ll have set it up. We’ll tackle the new Google Account and setting up Gmail forwarding in my next post, so see you then, unless you have some questions or comments to share below. Thanks!

The post One Account per Site: Set Up Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, Right, the First Time appeared first on Informed Iteration.