The <$10K Website

If you're a small company or nonprofit, here's the good news about websites: Many elements of a solid site are becoming increasingly commoditized and are getting cheaper. Cases in point:

- Most every site should be built on a content management platform (in other words, allow you to update it easily without paying an agency $200/hr. to add a comma). CMS platforms abound, ranging from "free and limited" to "expensive and robust." But the pressure is downward. Costs are going to come down as more and more elements of content management are packaged and commoditized.

- E-commerce functionality has also fallen to earth. Especially if you're a nonprofit, merchant accounts have also gotten more and more commoditized. In other words: Need to take credit cards? Not a big deal.

- Design should never be considered a commodity. I say this as the originator of Handshake Watch and as fervent opponent of using stock photography. But again, if the budget is extremely tight, the thousands of free WordPress themes out there can provide a decent design groundwork (although the integration from blogging themes to a "normal" website is not as easy as it looks).

This is all a long way of promoting one of my projects ... a website that took full advantage of this growing world of web commoditicization to give a nonprofit organization a good-quality site, with no handshakes or stock photography, linking to full e-commerce functionality and including some audio/visual bells and whistles--all for well under $10,000.

I mention this client because this client also represents a great cause: raising money to provide free legal services to people with disabilities and low-income families. So check out The Fund for the Legal Aid Society (and while you're at it, view their e-commerce section and send a few dollars their way). Thanks.

The Sorry State of Conference Room Communication

This has been a growing observation/pet peeve of mine for about three years now, and it has now reached epidemic proportions.

People don't communicate.

I'm serious. Everybody talks. Nobody listens. And the more people who are involved in any given communication, the less effective it is.

The first problem is the organizational setting. Some organizations are healthy and based on respect; others are clearly fearful and dysfunctional. You can tell immediately. My rule of thumb is that the people who claim to have "thick skin" and be "brutally honest" are actually the most over-sensitive and passive-aggressive. In the faux honest setting, people appear to confront each other without really doing it. By the end of the meeting, they're all nodding and happy, as if they've come to some agreement. In truth, they have come to no consensus whatsoever.

The second problem is this: Our verbal communication culture is mirroring our virtual culture. Right now I'm writing in one tab in Google Chrome. I have five other tabs open. I'm checking my email. I just got a call on my cell. I have IM open. According to my toolbar, I have 12 programs open at the same time, and I'm toggling between almost all of them.

In other words, if I get 30 seconds to devote to any one task, I'm lucky. Interruption has become the norm, so much so that we've internalized exterior interruptions and have started interrupting ourselves when no one else is around.

In conference room communication, the level of interruption is astounding. It used to be considered rude to start talking before the guy next to you has finished his sentence. Today, it's expected. Which means that when you talk, you have to talk quickly before you get interrupted. Talking, in fact, becomes a competition. Which is why in the end, everybody is talking and no one is listening.

Now tell me, if you actually got to the end of this post, did you do it without getting interrupted?