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change

it has been quite a turn for me. maybe "turn" isn't exactly the right term to describe the process of changing from Second degree in Organizational Psychology to working as an IT Analyst in a small business. While studying for my M.Sc. I was asked to make some changes to the website of Elimec, a small Electronic components business . I was glad to have the chance to put into practice some of my human factors so I took on the mission with enthusiasm.


doing what you know best

So, I rolled up my sleeves and started to define all the changes i knew the site had to undergo in order to become a user friendly, Search engine hospitable, and customer oriented site.
The list wasn't short, believe me... the site was almost a textbook example of how to build a user hostile, search engine intimdating and customer neck breaking site:
a flash homepage left search engines with their mouth open ;
site appearance was quite raw
and content was last updated just after king arthur managed to pull excalibur out of stone.

I then met with the guy who had built the old site, and asked him how much would the changes cost. his answer took me by surprise. what he asked was a lot more than i had expected for these changes.


Rock Climbing

I'm not really a rock climber. I took a rock climbing course in thailand a few years back, and surprisingly, this course taught me some things that no other university ever did. here are some of the lessons learned:
a. if you dont have a rope to hold you when you begin climbing- you dont have a chance to learn.
b. the view is nice when you get up, but it gets nicer if you have someone to share it with.
c. sometimes, the best way to get up, is to give up your current position, go a bit down, and then climb again.


Scrap it all

So i decided to check for another company to build us a website. I did what now seems to me remarkably smart, but at the time was just the first thing that came to my mind: I googled website building and made inquiries with the top companies on google's organic (=non paid) results.
after a meeting with the leading company in google, I was already persuaded; building a new website, that had more options than i even hoped for had cost just a little more than making all the changes to the old website.
at the time, what i thought was "hey, these guys seem more professional, they have more and bigger customers, and they offer even more options than i had thought about".
what i did not realise was that my choice was a good one for a totally different reason: a company that manages to be at the top of google's result must know what it is doing.

bottom lines:

{Psycholgical point}

• The tendency to do what you know best sometimes interferes with seeing the big picture.
• Sometimes you need to take one step back, in order to go further on. you can choose to hold on to an uncomfortable position you achieved, at the risk of getting stuck or falling down in the end.

{IT points}

• If your website doesnt really work, sometimes building a new one is a better idea than making changes to your current website, even for a small business budget.
• If the main focus of your site is to get more traffic and exposure for your company, a good way to start is to see what website building company can do for themsleves what they are supposed to do for you - get to the first page in google .