Observation

In 2014, one year into my weight-loss journey, I took my first steps towards becoming a runner. Using a C25K (Couch to 5K) app on my phone, I hit the streets and slowly transitioned from walking to running. After some trial and error, and some minor injuries, I finally felt comfortable enough to start to enter local 5k races in January 2015. After the first few races, I was only able to make it through those first couple miles before I was gassed. I’d end up doing a walk/run over the last mile. While the C25K training got me going, it was apparent that I had a number of lessons left to learn, and looked to local coaching programs to get me through a race.

“Stanley was in the search engine optimization business, meaning he was paid by companies to make their websites more popular by any means necessary. And some of his business was legit...”

Companies love the idea of creating great Customer Experiences. It makes sense that if you create positive customer interactions that customer loyalty will follow. But building a culture of positive customer interaction can be harder than it looks. And most companies want to simply “buy it”... and buy it cheaply.

I know that no one thinks their site is worth hacking. But the gangs of software robots roaming the Web don't know that.

Facebook likes to do fun things for its users, and generally it does want to protect its users. But as social media gets more fully integrated into our culture, things that were once fun and easy get more serious and harder to do. (This is my daily experience with building websites these days.)

Duh!

But in many ways it is "worse" and "better" than their research findings. The report is located here.  They encourage you to take the test yourself. I did — it was just 17 questions — and I can say it is like many surveys where there are some obvious and some trick questions. A couple of questions required a deep historical knowledge and other required very current applied knowledge.

Every website should have a custom 404 page. This is one the greats!

Most companies do not review their emailing lists enough. If you have huge lists that is probably OK, but just don't expect the names to always look right when you include lame "personalization". People know the email is sent in huge numbers. Don't try to (unsuccessfully) make it look one-off. If you have a small list, you really need to review it to make sure the data is correct.

You sent me an email I did not want, now you are giving terms and conditions? My terms are that you stop sending me emails.