And for those who spell differently…
“Chance Favors The Prepared Mind.” 
I’ve always loved that line attributed to the French scientist, Louis Pasteur – he of pasteurized milk and rabies vaccination fame.
So what exactly is a prepared mind?
Well, here’s an example of one half prepared…
Having coded and launched my new web content writing site a few weeks back, I was shocked to discover my contact page looked like this on Monday morning:
The image on the left is with FireFox. On the right is with Internet Explorer (6).
Duh! Bye-Bye!
There go 50% of the visitors to that contact page (stats say around 47% are using Internet explorer browsers.)
And the only reason I checked was because of problems on Sunday with this blog and Internet Explorer – the ‘Widget’ code on the right hand column was screwed up and displaying annoying “bullet points’ everywhere.
Anyway, the contact info image is now displaying correctly after I added the width and height pixel sizes to the html code. I must’ve forgot to do so at the time because this is what it looked like beforehand:
Lessons Learned?
1- Ass-umptions are for tripping over!
I knew I’d checked some of the web pages – but had no system for recording that I’d checked each page after a change was made.
2- Being 1/2 prepared was better than nothing – but what chances were thrown away because I’d reduced the odds of potential clients making contact (“First impressions count”.)
3- Systems Rock! – If I’ve learned anything from years in business, it’s that documented, checked and audited systems work! (It’s not rocket science – simple enough to work will do for starters…)
Followup Questions:
Is chance favo( )ring u?
What % of opportunities are passing you by?
Where and what are your systems for a prepared mind in career, business and life?
- Mark McClure
About the author
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Great Lesson Mark! I can totally understand how it happened, and I can feel your pain at the point you discovered it!
I did something similar not long ago where I was directing visitors to my blog to read a special report off the home page… the link went to a 404. I could have strangled myself.
Your idea of recording changes and checks sounds noble – I use noble as I don’t think I would be able to do it properly, mainly because I would need to log the changes in the same app/doc from many places. Perhaps I should look at Google Apps again…?
[Simon,
hoho! It's amusing now but less so at the time!
"If it works, it's obsolete" - more than a ring of truth to that old saw.
For a solo business owner I think this is where a simple written checklist would come in handy - in my head I'd checked off keeping a backup of the pre-change pages, uploading the new ones, testing in browser etc. But my browser checks did not specifically mention 'Firefox', 'IE' etc. That's the real power of systems and lists IMHO.
Speaking of 404 pages, I 'know' about it but I've had no written list for setting up a simple "take care of 404 visitors" procedure. This and other steps would probably be best written down and included with a screen capture video - a perfect little outsourcing task for an elancer to do.
Thanks for the reminder!
Mark]