Is your business coping with technological change? Struggling to maintain what business you have, but seeming to be facing a losing battle? Perhaps you are feeding yesterday and starving tomorrow as Peter Drucker says.
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I get no big thrills from Instagram, how about you? Cheerleading the endless new internet sites doesn’t give me a thrill either. The app du jour bores me terrifically, too. It is impossible just to keep up with the big new things, isn’t it?
Yet it can be hard to make the most of your time when you’re running a business, especially when you’re wearing a lot of different hats and trying to complete a lot of different tasks.
There are others who have been there, and they’ve found some methods to improve productivity with technology.
Here is a short 2 minute video explaining teghnological change.
In a discussion moderated by Beth Storz, President of Ideas To Go, former eBay CMO Richelle Parham hammered home the importance of constant reinvention among large enterprises. “The taxi industry is a perfect example” of what happens, said Parham. “It’s being disrupted by a company with no taxis and no employees. The incumbents don’t always win—just because they’re big, it doesn’t mean they’ll win.”
Many small businesses thrive on yesterday’s news. People nuzzle up to those who evangelize it. And that group is growing smaller day by day.
Products and apps launch and become mainstream. Then start fading. That’s about when the small business thinks about perhaps thinking how they might use them. They fascinate upon them for 6 to 9 months and then move on. Examples abound around us everywhere. Think blogging, social, video, QR codes.
This is not a sustainable strategy. It’s a scaled down version of digital disruption. It is a dangerous mode of distraction that keeps businesses from making real forward progress for your current and future customers.
I want to tell you about options for future consideration. A different journey.
Technological change … into the future
Less than two years ago, Apple warned its developers: Apps not optimized for the iPhone 5 or Retina displays will be rejected from the app store.
Apple could care less about its developer partners’ issues. Apple cares about progress. They know change is inevitable. They should as they are driving today’s digital jet. To be a part of Apple’s future, developers need to be present in the here and now.
Keep exploring: Small Company … 20 Struggles that Are Easily Understood
What if this was the mantra for your small business or those of your competitors? Imagine issuing your current technology partners a similar edict: Update your products to current standards, or else?
Or else.
Do you grasp the obvious Apples-and-oranges objection? Can you guess the land mines you’d set off if you unplugged the outdated, bandaged software your vendor refers to you as the best solution?
But your alternative options can seem even more worrisome. More training, more cost, more risk. That seems even drearier. But moving into the future with solutions created years ago cripples you. It costs you connections, leads, conversions, time and money. It costs your business. Not exactly what you are looking for is it?
You can’t progress forward when your best offering to current and potential customers is a tangled mess of old ideas.
Time for change
Seriously. I know that sounds dramatic. But how else can you guarantee that the experience you offer consumers will be commensurate with their expectations?
Consider the potential struggles users will experience browsing your site in 2017 if it’s built to 2010 sensibilities and expectations. Suddenly, your stacked content elements, links stuffed tight between gobs of copy, lack of images and video are more than just annoying to visitors – they’ve rendered your site difficult to use and unsightly to view at its best.
Your site will look as non-unique and antiquated as the sites of yesteryear. Unless you do something. Take the initiative now, before you fall further behind.
Let’s consider an example. In 1882, just three years after he had almost literally shocked the world with his revolutionary lighting system, Thomas Edison opened his Pearl Street Station, the first commercial electrical distribution plant in the United States. By 1884 it was already servicing over 500 homes.
Up till that point, electric light was mostly a curiosity. While a few of the powerful elite could afford to install generators in their homes—J.P.Morgan was one of the very first—it was out of the reach of most people. Electrical transmission changed all that, and in the ensuing years much of the country wired up.
Still, as Paul David explained in his paper, The Dynamo and the Computer, electricity didn’t have a measurable impact on the economy until the early 1920’s—40 years later, when we finally knew enough about the new technology and learned how to unleash its potential. The story of how that happened shows why it takes more than a single idea to change the world.
So here are three things that are perfectly reasonable to demand from a digital literate business:
Technological change examples … mobile competency
At least half of your website traffic in the future will be from users on a tablet or other mobile device. The days of thinking about “mobile” separately from your site are over.
Your mobile user experiences need to be every bit as usable as your desktop experiences. Responsive, adaptive, web, native – there are many means – but the end is the thing. It’s got to be stand-out awesome.
Speed
Did you know a one-second delay in load times will decrease your conversions by 7%? There are hundreds of studies that dish up tidbits like that. The bottom line: slow kills.
Too many small businesses don’t experiment with new digital infrastructure. They are using what they started with. Or they’re skimping on support because they believe it’s something customers will never see. And, oh, by the way, software is as relevant here (or most so) as hardware.
Pay attention. Test. And demand that your website performance isn’t just about uptime.