Be sure that visitors subject your website to the same first-impression scrutiny that they exercise in real life, only faster. It takes 0.1 second to decide whether your site is attractive, 10 seconds to decide that your site is “taking too long” to respond, and 1 minute to be fed up with a task or a video.

Explaining the importance of getting this right is critical to a development team has its problems, as people “yes but” when it comes to their territory. The marketing department may “yes but” over the whiz-bang elements that slow down the site. Interaction designers may “yes but” when asked to redo problematic area. Developers may “yes but” when asked to do over some code. The writers may “yes but” when you insist that a content strategy must precede the content development stage.

Actually, it’s not even the “yes but” that is the problem; that may just development stakeholders working through how to fix the situation. The problem is when the “yes but” is accompanied by a workaround, a justification, or a reason that serves to solve an internal problem rather than a client-facing problem. It can throw the development timeline off, affect the quality of the final product, and compromise the maintainability of the site. Because all of these factors have an effect on the Total Cost of Ownership, sometimes in serious ways, the “yes but” can be the “gotcha” that takes a project down; definitely not something I’d want to underestimate.

Thanks for everyone who sent their congratulations and good wishes. I’ll be celebrating with the other seven new Fellows at the STC Summit in Atlanta, GA, in May.

When the project budget starts to get iffy, what gets cut is usually the planning for after The Big Day. There seems to be a blind faith that either (a) the romance of the new system will make everything work just fine – I call this the starry-eyed bride approach, or (b) that staff will adopt the arranged marriage by edict – the bullying husband approach. We know the outcomes of these approaches; some of us have been subjected to them ourselves.

The good news is that now we have a name for the line item in the CMS project budget: web operations management. The bad news is that more organizations still prepare for a wedding than prepare for a marriage. With the wonky economic situation and a greater need for fiscal responsibility, will 2009 finally be the year of responsible coupling?

What a great concept. I’m going to make 2009 my own year of creating unexpected value. What better way to create a great user experience for those who deal with me in a professional capacity?

Another article is Think Weird and Prosper, which I’m reviving as a resource for those progressive thinkers who, like nails that stick up from the wood, get pounded down when they try to act on innovative ideas. This is a companion piece to the other article, and provides some ideas for alternative careers during hard economic times. While everyone else is concentrating on the same old, same old, you can be promoting yourself in a whole new way, and during hard times, your employer or clients are more willing to listen to new ideas.

Eating your own dog food – Consultants aren’t immune from this lesson: the documentation experts who try to get around the content management system by copying files, or who email files back and forth across the office instead of using the internal wiki need to hold themselves to the same standards being recommended for clients.

Flying by the seat of your pants development method – Also known as the took-the-contract-and-am-hiring-some-contractors, hope-they-know-what-they’re-doing method. Makes me shudder, but some consulting firms consider it ethical to take on whatever project comes their way and then wing it.

The “we do everything” solutions companies – They say they offer consultants, but in reality it’s a bait-and-switch operation, providing low-cost intermediates at expert rates. Despite the protest comments on the IT Toolbox blog, I must differ; I’ve seen the results in action.

Corporate cholesterol – I love this name for inefficient internal processes. A friend of mine does a presentation on this that skewers everyone equally. Use email as a meeting planning tool? Create invoices in Excel, then have the bookkeeper put them into the accounting software? Pass documents around using email instead of using a tool that controls versioning? Do you even use a project management tool? Independent consultant, small team, or large organization, why choose a consultant who sticks to old ways of working?

Having just come out of a conference on content convergence, I’ve gone on a new round of seeking out greater efficiencies for my own consulting practice. Some exist; some don’t (yet) or maybe I just haven’t found what I want. But I’m open to collaborating on select projects if it means new skookum software gets out there for public use. Isn’t that the best offer you’ve heard all day?