As you already know, a lot goes into building a website. There’s the design, the programming, the implementation… but before all that comes the content. Getting the content wrong could mean quite a bit of backtracking later on, and I think we can all agree backtracking = evil. So while you’re busy not taking one step forward and two steps back, make sure you don’t forget perhaps the most important element of your copy- the thing that will get readers to do what you want them to do.

It’s a crucial (and largely underrated) part of writing website content: the call to action.

What’s the Point?
When users visit your site, they’re either looking for something specific (which is why you make your navigation incredibly user-friendly- so they can get in and get out.) or they’re interested in learning more about your company/product. Either way, what they don’t want is to reach the end of a page and think “Okay, what do I do now?” Keep Reading

A lot of people in this world think meetings are evil. I tend to be one of those people, actually. But let me clarify- it’s meetings that take 3 hours to accomplish what could have been knocked out in 30 minutes that get under my skin.

I have a deep appreciation for group communication. People working together, touching base frequently, actively collaborating and working toward the best possible result. There’s nothing negative about that.

I just think there are ways to go about it that don’t require half a day’s attention. Frequent e-mails showing progress, phone calls to touch base, and some occasional face time is nice! And I like to think our clients agree. After all, once we’ve determined we’re all on the same page, don’t they want us spending more time working on their project than talking about it?

For me, what matters most isn’t the code or pixels, it’s the users, clients, and friends who share it with me.

It’s always nice to find other people who think like we do, and Trent Walton does. He shares our belief that it’s more about the overall experience we create for our users, rather than the bits and pieces we use to get there. Although we strain immensely over all of those bits, and pour tirelessly over each of the pieces, what brings us the most joy is someone telling us “your work really helped me today.”

And that is what we strive for, because the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts.

Ever wish you could get a little more organization inside your Moleskine? I mean, they’re already small, portable, and sleek looking- all great things. But our thoughts can be all over the place, and our note-taking shows it. We found ourselves drawing all over our notebooks in an attempt to become more organized… and ended up being the exact opposite.

We fixed our own problem… then decided it might be useful to other people, too!

We came up with an experiment to incorporate our todo lists into that same Moleskine pocket notebook we carry around all the time anyway. All you do is peel and stick the StickTo right onto the page, write your todos, and check ‘em off as you go. Instant organization. There’s even a tab that sticks out to remind you you’re not quite done with your list yet. No worries, though- when you are done, you can just rip off that tab and get on with it.

When most of our organization happens online, it’s nice to have a tangible reminder that our physical lives can be just as put together.

Check them out here

I love answering support e-mails. Yes, you heard me correctly.

Before I started working with Paste, my experiences with support had been frustrating. One particularly infuriating instance comes to mind…

Two years ago, my cell phone was having major malfunctions, and the actual store representative told me I’d have to call their main support line for help.

Seriously?

So I called support and listened to an automated woman talk for half an hour about all the other services available… none of which I cared about. Not even a little bit. I just wanted to know what was wrong with my phone and how to fix it. When I finally got to talk to a real person, she was such a low level customer service rep that she couldn’t help, either. She told me to send in my phone (seriously?!?!) and she’d have their technical engineers take a look at it. Keep Reading

The web is truly in a great place right now. Every day you can see dozens of new applications launched that required countless man hours to make. The nuances and specificity of them is beginning to boggle the mind. The sheer quantity of people on Earth capable of writing a web application is amazing.

In fact, as a web developer it’s somewhat daunting. You can have a thought like “what if I made a tool to keep track of when my next oil change comes due?” and a few seconds later realize that dozens of apps have beat you to the punch.

Sure, you could maybe improve the interface, make it prettier, promote it better, integrate it with Twitter, etc. But it seems like there’s nothing left in big chunks that isn’t a minute improvement on a small facet of something else.

Let’s skip to another subject for a second.

In 1997 NASA, in conjunction with the European and Italian Space Agencies, launched the Cassini-Huygens space probe. It had a far-reaching set of goals, most of which seemed more optimistic than legitimate. It’s track was outward from Earth- taking a layman’s tour of our solar system as it became accessible by coincidentally calculated orbit.

After near-space tours of Earth’s moon, Venus, and Jupiter, Cassini was en-route to one of Saturn’s moons named Enceladus. By this time it was 2005, and Cassini had already discovered three new moons of Saturn, tested General Relativity and made countless other minor discoveries leading to better understandings of our close corner of the universe. Keep Reading

Next time I just have to have that book on Amazon, I will remember this. My already crowded bookshelf will thank me.

“Coveting possessions is unhealthy. Here’s how I look at it:

All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free.

When I want to take something out of storage, I just pay the for the storage costs for that particular thing up to that point, plus a nominal shipping fee, and my things are delivered to me so I can use them. When I am done with them, I return them to storage via Craigslist or Ebay, and I am given a fee as compensation for freeing up the storage facilities resources.” – via Jackcheng in The Office of Frank Chimero

In 1899 Charles H. Duell, was quoted as saying, “everything that can be invented has been invented.” To our ears, he sounds like an ignorant old hayseed. You could fill oceanliners with the gobs of stuff that has been invented since then.

But I have to admit I can relate to the statement. Everywhere I look on the internet I see the same old crap. Recombinations of old ideas. Mostly minor improvements on “old” ideas that were created only just months ago. I suppose as an industry we’re just iterating on our own ideas. I suppose it’s healthy.

But I can’t help thinking it’s getting a little old. I’m not pretending we’re above this criticism. Some people have said that Staction was just Twitter+Basecamp. Jumpchart was called “a specialized wiki.” Paprika is probably an even smaller evolutionary leap.

We’ve been working for seemingly endless months on tweaks to our current apps. In the background we’ve been dreaming of new apps. I have lists of ideas. Many lists, -big lists. I can pretty much summarize them for you, -they’re all essentially just a different way to collect data from form fields and process it. That’s what all productivity apps do.

So what can you do to invent? Someone types text on a keyboard, and you store it. Or use rudimentary processing to try and understand it. Or attach meta information to it to try and make it more useful. Ad infinitum.

So have we as an industry maxed out the number of ways we can creatively combine todos, milestones, text, and files? What’s the next thing in productivity apps?

A lot of people think the moment of discovery is a loud, bright, crash-bang thing that happens all in one instant.

I think that’s wishful thinking.

As humans, we can be guilty of sitting around, waiting for the next big idea to hit us. We reactively reflect, think about things, expose ourselves to relevant material and hope to have some sort of epiphany that will make us the next Alexander Graham Bell. But it’s just another excuse for not producing. Is waiting for something to be revealed to us just divine laziness?

Think about some of the biggest inventions in history. The telephone. The lightbulb. The computer. The inventors of all these things worked their butts off over a period of time to get the results they ended up with. They pitched their ideas. They got rejected time after time. But they made progress, then made improvements on their progress. They got to their finished product in increments- not all in one day.

So, instead of waiting for greatness to strike and our names to go down in the history books in the blink of an eye, we should spend our time improving on the baby steps we’ve already taken…. The path less traveled.

Interesting related reading: Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

The race is never over. Your app is never done.

I haven’t been in this business for long, but if there’s one thing I’ve seen proven to be true, it’s that the launch of an app is only step one. Yeah, it’s a big step, and something you should be really proud of, but it only signifies the beginning of a long stretch of finish lines to be crossed.

It’s an endurance race. There are always hurdles to clear, coaches yelling at you to do better, and teammates who are counting on you. Each update or feature addition takes preparation and time; each user comment takes careful consideration.

But every time you cross one of the little finish lines, you remember why you love what you do. That satisfaction is what motivates you to train for the next ribbon you snap. And each time you stretch your arms toward the sky in victory, you’ve made progress toward a better app.