Changing Direction in Business

Posted on April 9, 2012 by The Dust Bunny Mafia
Changing Direction

Is it time to change the direction of your brand?

There comes a time in every business owners life when they need to make a decision. A decision on where they are going to invest their ___________ (time, money, effort, etc). This time happens more frequently than just once per lifetime, year, month. Realistically it can happen on a weekly basis or depending on circumstances, a daily basis. The key thing to note is that your business is going to change; whether this change was internal or externally-influenced, is void in this state, but what remains is the fact that the business you are working in right now might not be the same in a week, a month or a year from now. One great example of this principal is from a client of mine, Clayton Brewing Company, located in San Dimas, CA.

When Clayton Brewing first came into town, they established themselves as a coffee shop that also had a full menu. Clayton’s vision was to expand into a place where they could ultimately brew beer, but for the start, they had to stick to simply coffee and food. Clayton’s had great customer service, a good atmosphere and great coffee. It was different than most coffee shops around and it showed in their drinks. As of last week, roughly 18 months since their opening, they have removed the final component of the coffee side and are exclusively branding themselves as a gastro-pub.

Clayton Brewing Company knew that ultimately they would focus on food and brewing beer, but until the time was just right, they had to start somewhere else. Small modifications were implemented along the way to get Clayton’s atmosphere to change from a coffee shop to a brew pub. Some examples from Clayton’s are: removing breakfast from the menu, changing the hours of operation, and dropping the coffee altogether because the profit gained wasn’t worth the cost of operations. In the same way your business will change over time, just make sure you are prepared for it.

Have you seen this in your brand/business? Do you have any insights into changing directions? Let’s hear what you have to say in the comments!

Leave a comment

All Eyes on You(r Website)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by The Dust Bunny Mafia

When visitors come to your website, are they being led to the most important parts of your site or getting confused, lost and then subsequently leaving? According to KissMetrics, it’s estimated that 50% of sales are lost because potential customers cannot find what they are looking for.1

In the technologically-induced world we live in, people have short attention spans, so you need to make your website load quickly and user friendly if you want people to stick around.

In order to know what people are looking at most on your website, it’s important to make it clear where users are supposed to go through the use of good navigation, proper content structure, good design and fast load times. A great way to learn how people focus is to by studying their eye movement, which is known as eye movement tracking.

  1. Good Navigation:
    No one wants to be confused when they get to a website and you especially don’t want to have your clients or potential customers to be confused on where they are supposed to go. With that in mind, don’t send your audience around in circles to find exactly what they are looking for, instead provide them with a clear and consistent navigation menu and it will make all the difference.
  2. Proper Content Structure
    Depending on whether or not your site contains advertisements, this may or may not apply to you directly, but for most websites there is a standard flow of information. Up top there is a header which usually has a logo and the main business information, then the navigation bar, then the main content and afterwards the footer. If you have a website that doesn’t follow this pattern, it may be worth redesigning your site. Even though it seems like 99% of websites follow this pattern and you want yours to stand out, is it worth the risk of losing your audience for the different design?
  3. Good Design
    Following right along suite with the last point, having a well-designed website makes all the difference. Studies show that people generally approach a website with a “F mentality” in which they will read across horizontally the top of the page (normally the head information, then move down to the navigation menu and move again horizontally across the page then they will scroll down the rest of the page, the pattern then forming an F shape.
  4. Fast Load Times
    According to a 2006 survey by Akamai, it was found that: A) 75% of people would not return to websites that took longer than 4 seconds to load; and B) The big spenders on the net ranked page-loading time as a priority. If your website doesn’t pull up within the first four seconds, there’s a good chance that you are only getting 25% of your potential visitors.

For further reading, a great info-graphic that represents this concept is by KissMetrics entitled, “Leave a Website” and it can be found here.

What do you think about this? How long do you wait for a site to load? What are your thoughts on this matter?

2 Comments

The Dust Bunny Mafia Comics Arrive

Posted on March 28, 2012 by The Dust Bunny Mafia


You Are Invited

Come on over to visit the newest segment of the Dust Bunny Mafia’s online presence, the Dust Bunny Mafia Comics website. For those of you reading this that haven’t seen the Dust Bunny Mafia comics, circulating on Facebook & Twitter then you should check them out. This new component is the fifth major online sector of the Dust Bunny Mafia, the other four are, 1) this blog, 2) the website, 3) Facebook, and 4) Twitter.

Where’s the New Material?

Now that you know where the site is, http://Comics.DustBunnyMafia.com, I bet you’re wondering when the new material will be coming out. Well, you are in luck, new comics are coming out every Friday morning. You’re probably wondering, why the new material is coming out at the end of the week, rather than a normal day like Mondays. Well, Fridays are the gateway to the weekend, and what better way to start off the weekend right than with some humor. The links will be posted on Facebook and Twitter, but the best way to make sure you catch them is to bookmark the site and visit the comics there.

So…What Now?

Go check out the site: http://Comics.DustBunnyMafia.com and stay tuned for a new comic going live on Friday morning.

2 Comments

Pinterest Updates It’s Terms

Posted on March 26, 2012 by The Dust Bunny Mafia

Pinning the Dust Bunny Mafia

Last week on Friday, March 23, 2012, Pinterest published a blog post which you can read in it’s entirety here, “Updated Pinterest Terms.”

Basically it says that over the past few weeks, they have been tweaking their fine print, because they had a generic set to begin with. The best part of this is that the company had begun to really listen to those who were leaving pinterest for ownership concerns, like the DBM, for one. In their blog post, they state,

“Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for us to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.”

Woohoo!

Now here is a company that actually listened to it’s customers concerns and decided to do something about it. Further, Pinterest has also released tools to make it easier for it’s users to report copyright or trademark infringements; another smart move on their part.

These Terms will go into effect for all users on April 6, 2012, I will be deciding in the mean time if Pinterest is something to jump back into.

What do you think about all of this? Was this a smart decision by the team over at Pinterest? Should the Dust Bunnies jump back on the bandwagon and get back on Pinterest?

Leave a comment

The Dust Bunny Mafia Leaves Pinterest

Posted on March 19, 2012 by The Dust Bunny Mafia

If you go to Pinterest.com right now and search for the Dust Bunny Mafia, you won’t find anything. But, if you would have searched for Dust Bunny Mafia a few weeks ago you would have found about 20 illustrations of the individual family members and a few of the audience-favorite Customer Service comics as well. Then all of the sudden, like Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects, “Poof! They’re gone.”

So, What Made Them Leave?

The answer to why the Dust Bunny Mafia is no longer on Pinterest is a simple one, I don’t agree with their Terms of Service. Now if you are like most people, when you go to a website, install new software or fill out an application, when you come across the Terms of Service (fine print) section you gloss over it and check the box that you read over the terms and agree to it. I did that too, because frankly, I was in too big of a hurry to use the site that I didn’t want to read the fine print.

A few weeks after joining the site and actively publishing my Dust Bunny Mafia characters to boards, I stumbled upon an article highlighting the much-glossed-over Terms of Service. After reading the article I took a closer look at the Terms and here is the part that I do not agree with:

Member Content
… By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services. Cold Brew Labs does not claim any ownership rights in any such Member Content and nothing in these Terms will be deemed to restrict any rights that you may have to use and exploit any such Member Content.

Now that’s a mouthful. Essentially it says that, “They are able to SELL, transfer, stream, sublicense, use, adapt, modify, LICENSE and otherwise EXPLOIT your member content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.” 1

Yeah, the Dust Bunnies have just left the building. The only person/company that should be able to make a profit from my Dust Bunnies is me, unless I have entered into an agreement of the professional nature, i.e. toys, figurines, video game, movie, etc.

The fine print isn’t fun to read, but it’s worth it. I have learned my lesson and that’s why the Dust Bunnies left Pinterest. What about you?

Are you on a site that has the capability to exploit your business without your knowledge? If so, what are you going to do about it?

2 Comments