For everyone who is sitting in a candy coma at their desk this afternoon: sit back, relax, and read some of the best things we found online this past week.

This week’s blog includes the sad story of the Tomato Land web site, but mostly walks you through a few good reasons to revisit your web site’s design and feature set:

“It’s a good idea in general to see your web site as an evolving piece of your marketing and customer experience delivery system. Unlike your business cards or brochures, you can tweak it any time you like…”

 

At this point, I am going through a laptop about every 2 years, which is getting expensive! This article lists five ways you contribute to the destruction of your computer.

Most of the time it isn’t suicide or cosmic rays that killed your machine. It’s homicide.”

Stock photos are a great resource for any organization that can’t afford an in-house photographer (which is virtually all our clients). That said, there are ways to get around the cheesy shots of five guys around a conference table

“A man walking down the street in a business suit is too common, but a close up of his pink and purple tie is much more interesting.”

Have a speaking engagement coming up, and terrified that you might not know what to say? Don’t worry. There’s a mad-lib-style speech waiting for you at Entrepreneur magazine:

“Let me tell you a little story. I once [HAD A TOUGHER-THAN-USUAL YEAR/ALMOST DECLARED BANKRUPTCY/TECHNICALLY ASSAULTED A CUSTOMER]. Sure, I could’ve [CLOSED UP SHOP/WEPT UNCONTROLLABLY/TURNED MYSELF IN], but I didn’t do that. You know what I did? I ran back toward the [PROBLEM/FRAY/SCENE OF THE POSSIBLE CRIME]. Did I solve the problem with my brain? Well, [NO/A LITTLE/SORT OF]. Mainly, I solved it with my [HEART/SOUL/OFFER OF FREE SMOOTHIES FOR LIFE]. Sometimes you have to [DIG DEEP/SUMMON YOUR INNER CHAMPION/OFFER UP A TON OF FREE SMOOTHIES].”

At this point, my attention to what comes out of the UnMarketing team is bordering on obsessive. I love Scott Stratten’s ranking of the worst uses of social media:

“I can’t believe this went through management and got approved. I can’t fathom that no one looked at this and said: maybe be shouldn’t ‘leverage’ the hurricane.”

Math. Holy moly, it’s not my strong point, but even I feel hopeful after this video. My clients sometimes tell me they are not “computer people” or “web people,” and to them, I say, like Sarah in this video: it’s a skill. You can do it. <iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/Xs9aGVUZ3YA” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

“Give yourself a little slack. No one’s going to expect the right answers all the time.”

I wish I’d written this! Great building blocks for web design:

“…you don’t need to be a developer to understand the basic components of a website. Understanding common terminology like responsive design, knowing the complementary building blocks of HTML5 and CSS3 and recognizing the importance of a CMS will demystify the world of web development.”

Non-profits, take note: not everything is a good fit for commitee work:

“We need to be leaders that make unpopular calls to keep an idea focused. Otherwise, we end up with a lack of a vision, internal inconsistencies, feature creep, and uninspired products.”

How would your non-profit use a free Google Glass product?

“…showing the before and after from the perspective of those impacted would shift who’s telling the story from the nonprofit to the person whose life is changed forever.”

Finally: I will never, never say no to one of these: Feel free to buy me one any time! See you next week.