One of my college professors offered this advice about writing a news story: “Like a mini skirt, it should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to still be interesting.” This also is true when you are designing your website.

There is a balance between too much information and not enough.

Think about that one client or coworker that drives you crazy. You know, the super annoying one. Grab a piece of paper and make two columns. On the left side list their quirky traits that bug you. What about them is so hard to get along with? On the right side list things they should be doing that would make them happier and easier to work with.

Now for the hard part. Cross their name off the top of the list and write in your own.

If you are honest with yourself, you will find that the things that annoy you in other people are traits that you actually exhibit. It’s not so much that we see the faults in others as it is that we see our own faults when we look at other people.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser, Cassius says, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” He’s talking about how we create our own destiny.

If your cousin’s kid took a class in high school about building web pages, is that <i>really</i> the guy you want to design one of the major elements of your marketing campaign? (Even though I’m sure he’s a very nice kid.)

If you are still resistant to the idea that you need a presence on the internet, welcome to real life. Not only do you need a web page. It needs to be a very good web page. When a potential customer visits your page, you have exactly five seconds to draw them in before they go elsewhere.

I was picking up Chinese takeout. Behind the counter a handwritten sign read, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” While I was paying I asked the hostess if they ever actually did that. I mean, how can you run a business if you refuse clients, right? She said that sometimes, when someone is exceptionally rude, the management will ask them to leave. That surprised me. I would have thought that $50 from a rude person would deposit in the bank just as easily as $50 from a more polite patron. I guess that sometimes it’s just not worth the hassle.