It didn't take too long before my experience working at Zane Benefits caused me to realize that I absolutely can't work at a large company ever again.  I love the start-up environment.  I love the responsibility and the risk and the sense of urgency.  When I'm done here, I'll be deciding between starting something on my own (possibly with other people) or joining a new start-up.

There's something weird going on in the Gateway Center in Park City (the building where I work).  On the top floor, Zane Benefits has two offices, Hunter Capital (a venture capital firm) has one, and the HR department of the Sky Lodge (a hotel) has the fourth.  There are only these four offices.

Hunter and Zane Benefits have signs on all their doors identifying which company occupies that space.  The Sky Lodge doesn't have any sign and there's no receptionist.  When you look in their door there isn't anyone to speak to and there's no indication that the Sky Lodge is there.

Being the HR department for a hotel, there are constantly people coming in to interview for positions.  They know to go to the top floor of our building but then they're lost.  My desk is next to a window that looks out onto the entire public area of our floor so I see exactly what everyone goes through to figure out which office to go into.

The average Sky Lodge applicant gets off the elevator and immediately sees all four offices.  They see 3 doors that are clearly not what they're looking for and one unmarked door.  Despite the fact that the unmarked door has to be the Sky Lodge, everyone ends up coming into our office and asking where the Sky Lodge is.

Aside from the obvious question of why the Sky Lodge doesn't just put up a sign, I can't help but wonder why people prefer to go into an office that is clearly not what they're looking for rather than going into the office that is almost certainly what they're looking for.  

I think the answer is that people are afraid of uncertainty.  The Zane Benefits office looks friendly and professional.  It's obvious that if you walk in, someone will talk to you and help you out.  No one wants to go into an unmarked office and wander around until they find someone.

So as always, I'm going to force this weird anecdote into the context of web design.  I generally assume that I can build features into a website and advanced users will find them on their own.  The less sophisticated users don't generally need to see these features, so I figure there's no need to hold anyones hand.  Now I'm wondering if even advanced computer users might have a mental block preventing them from trying things that are uncertain.

For example, sometimes I'm on a website and I'm not sure what a button does.  Generally, I just click the button and see what happens.  What's the worst that could happen?

Well, Most people probably don't try things unless they know exactly what they're doing.  Maybe it's time to do a little more hand holding, even for power users.

You may have seen the news that Google is releasing a new communication tool called Google Wave.  I'm not going to talk about what I think about the product itself because it's impossible to have an opinion without being able to use it.  I want to talk about their goal.

The most interesting part of Wave is the way they claim to have formulated the idea.  They claim that this is how email would work if it were designed today instead of 40 years ago.  I'm not sure if they accomplished that goal, but I like the way they're thinking.

This is a great way to come up with really innovative new creations.  When you're trying to brainstorm new ideas, it's natural to take the approach that new ideas require solving new problems and creating new products.  Google Wave is proof that creativity can thrive even when addressing solved problems.

This is similar to how Zane Benefits works.  We spent a while trying to implement HRAs (Health Reimbursement Arrangements) in a way that was consistent with the existing health benefits industry.  We ended up constantly struggling with the inherently irrational and broken rules of the existing system.  Now, anytime we need to create a new product, we try to imagine how things should work rather than how things do work.  Sometimes we're forced to play nice with existing health care plans.  Sometimes we have the chance to re-invent the entire industry which is really exciting.

So let's brainstorm a few other things that should be re-invented like email and health benefits.  I'll give a few, but feel free to comment if you think of something I don't.

Sports

Strategy in sports is often based on how the game was played in the past.  Football in particular seems to offer a million different possible strategies and almost none of them have ever been tried.  Why not use two quarterbacks at the same time?  Why not go for it on 4th down almost every time (it works in madden)?

Banking

It seems really weird to me that with all the technology we have, I still have to keep some of my money in a checking account and some in a savings account.  Why can't I write checks from a savings account?  As it is now, I can transfer money from one account to another instantly so I always keep money in savings and transfer it to checking immediately before making a payment.  It's a pointless formality.  This is one of many ways in which the banking industry is still acting like they're storing everything in a physical vault.

Twitter

Twitter is stupid.  I would re-invent it by never inventing it in the first place.

How the Internet Works

I'm no expert when it comes to networking and transfer protocols and all that, but in a general sense, the internet was invented before anyone knew what it would turn into.  From the way information is transferred to the languages used to describe web sites (html, css, javascript, etc), the entire thing could use some improvement.  The creators of the internet had no idea what they were creating so it seems obvious that we could do a better job now.

Internet/TV/Phone Service

This is obvious, but I'll say it anyway.  Why in the world do we think of a TV signal as something different than an internet connection?  Why do we pay for data, text messages and minutes on our phones?  It's all just a bunch of ones and zeros, so how about some company actually charges for and provides these services with the realization that they're all the same thing (I know that the answer is because they couldn't charge as much).

Ok, so I'm not particularly proud of any of these examples.  I guess I feel fine with that because if I could think of a field that should truly be re-invented, I should be working in that field.  That seems to be how great companies are born.  Even still, what do you guys think?  What are some things that are based on tradition but could become something much better?

Between this blog and work, I'm in a position where I really need to figure out how to handle the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for a website.  I'll probably be posting a lot about SEO and analytics in the coming months, but first I want to summarize what I've learned so far with this site.

First, I should say that nothing I'm mentioning here is rocket science.  You could type  "SEO advice" into Google and see all of these things in big bold letters, but I'm confirming them through my own experience.

The reason I started this blog was to control my web presence.  "Tyler King" is a pretty common name so I knew I had my work cut out for me.  My main goal was to get to the #1 result on Google if you search for "Tyler King".  I made my way from nothing to the #2 result in about a month and I think it's just a matter or time before I'm #1.  I now realize that getting to #1 is just the tip of the iceberg.

Anyway, here are some lessons I've learned so far:

Google can't read images

This is incredibly obvious, but I still made this mistake.  The homepage for my site only had the four images linking to my blog, portfolio, bio and resume.  There was no text anywhere which is fine for humans reading  the site (because the images had text in them) but Google came to my site and it couldn't figure out what was going on.  Any text that someone might search for should be in the html, not just in images.

Change your titles

This site originally had the same title (the text you see in your start bar when viewing one of these pages) which was "TylerKing.net".  Because of this, Google though all my pages were about the same thing.  By changing the titles based on the content on the page, I can prioritize which terms are important for which pages on my site.

Tags Matter

In HTML, the H1 tag is used to identify the main title of a page.  I was using other tags for all my text and styling it to look like a title.  For some reason Google just wasn't indexing my pages the way I wanted so I started using H1 tags and in a couple of days, my Google page rank was much higher.  Search engines can't guess what you're thinking, so it's important to use the old standards sometimes.

Link to everything

Many links on my site actually use javascript to navigate to a new page.  Google isn't good at following javascript links which resulted in Google only indexing the first page of my blog (5 posts).  As soon as I added the archives to the sidebar (which use real, legit HTML links) the problem was solved.

Change your content regularly

I always heard that search engines love indexing new content.  If my blog's homepage looks different to google every time it crawls my site, that makes it seem like my site is active and relevant.  The more posts I write, the more fun google can have indexing everything.

Get started now!

Search engines rank sites higher if they've been around longer.  There was a period of time where my site slowly rose in the ranks without me having actually done anything worthwhile.  Google trusts sites more if they have a longer history.  So if you're thinking about making a site, get started now even if you don't need it now.  SEO doesn't happen overnight.

Webmaster Tools rock

Google offers something called "Webmaster Tools".  I dismissed this for a while because I thought it was made to help people that couldn't manage sites by themselves.  It turns out that these tools tell you all kinds of cool stuff.  Did you know that a large percentage of the people that see my site as a result in Google used the search terms "Why is Tyler King gay".  Seriously.  Dozens of people searched for that.  Seriously.

Sitemaps aren't just for humans

Another thing Google Webmaster Tools lets you do is submit a specially formatted sitemap so that Google knows exactly where they can find all your pages.  That way the crawlers don't have to find all your pages on their own.

Well that's all for now.  I just set up better analytics tools at work so the SEO blitz begins this week.  I'm sure I'll have plenty of fun things to write about.