“I am a child of fire
I am a lion
I have desires
And I was born inside the sun this morning”
— Hanging Tree, by Adam Duritz (Counting Crows)

We all want to feel this way. We want to believe we’re the best at whatever it is we’re doing. We want to feel brilliant. Beautiful. Passionate. Alive. Bigger than alive.

Funny thing. So do our users. And our job is to help them feel that way.

The question isn’t whether or not you should talk to one. The question is, When is the right time?

The answer is right now. Before you get any further along on a major product update without a guiding vision. Before you spend days on end designing high-quality artwork for a muddled concept that won’t fly no matter how nice the aesthetic. Before you announce something important to the world (and it’s all important) without getting an expert opinion. And before you have to spend a whole day explaining your muddled concept to the designer you brought in to clarify it.

Talk to the designer first, before you make a bunch of decisions. It’ll be much easier to talk yourself out of the bad ones if you haven’t spent a lot time convincing yourself they’re good.

(I’m not saying all your ideas will be bad, by the way—just that the bad ones need to be quashed before they do harm, and designers usually are very good quash-ers.)

Virtually every site for every corporation, product, non-profit, or service on the web includes an “About Us” section. And right now, almost all of them are broken. 

Sure, this boilerplate collection of site pages does the simple job of letting visitors know who they’re having a marketing conversation with—who’s inside the company walls, what the organization does, and so on.

But in the “Web 2.0” era, these sections are missing something important:

A list of the organization’s social networking profiles.

If markets are conversations—and you know they are—then our sites need to start pointing to the places where the conversations really take place. Where our biggest fans and worst enemies can talk to a representative of the people listed on “About Us”. Where the “About Us” people can talk back.

JetBlue, Zappos, and others have leapt forward far enough to dedicate real people to man their Twitter updates (as opposed to bots). It’s time to follow suit.

It’s also time to reinvent “About Us”.

After blogging for 3 1/2 years, I’ve finally arrived at an official title for this blog. Here’s why it matters.

Your time is important, and when millions of other blogs are just a click away, I want you to know that I respect your time.

Over the past few weeks I’ve become more and more dedicated to keeping posts focused on very specific takeaways. One post, one idea. Simple as that.

Posts about things that, when applied, can make your site, web application, or customer experience better (and yes, the occasional post about a project or book or speaking engagement). From now on, I’m committing to this approach.

So here’s my offer to you. You give me your attention, and I’ll give you …

“Ideas worth stealing.”

Register.com asked me to do something stupid today, and it demonstrates just how much we shouldn’t rely on crafty development work to do our jobs for us.

See, several years ago, I bought a domain name through Register.com for a site I used to support my first book (on Flash design basics). I haven’t touched the site since the day I put it on the server, and since I no longer do Flash development, I certainly never plan to use the site again. But there it sits, quietly offering up the downloadable ZIP files from the book, which is now ridiculously outdated.

Since then, I’ve gone through a few lifetimes worth of design work, projects, jobs, clients, and writings (including the new book). Along the line, I took my future into my own hands and started Miskeeto.

Fast forward to today. Register.com sent me the following email.

In short, Register told me that using an email address that contains my first and last name, separated by a period and tied to the domain name for my old book support site—the one I haven’t touched in 4 years—is better than using my first name only in an address tied to my actual business. The one I run right now.

They even insulted me by implying I’ve chosen the wrong address for myself. I’m doing a poor job of communicating to my customers that I run a legitimate, credible business. I’m disorganized, people don’t read my email, and no one knows my company name. Their suggested email address “beats” my current address. And it only costs $15 a year. I’d be a fool to pass up their offer.

Perhaps, instead, I’d be a fool to let this email convince me that Register knows what I need.

Perhaps, also, I’d be a fool to replace quality customer service with an unfaltering reliance on technology. To let a programmer decide how my customers should be treated. To tell my customers they make poor decisions.

What will your next email ad say to your customers?