Do you have trouble remembering what you’ve asked others to do (delegation) and getting timely responses from your co-workers? I have a suggestion (of course!).

In David Allen’s oh-so-popular Getting Things Done book he illustrates how one should create a “Waiting For” e-mail folder. I think this is a great idea. Let’s take a a step beyond just a folder though.

If everyone in your department/team/company keeps one of these, it can be used in a regular daily/weekly meeting to ensure timely follow-up from others.

Get everyone together in a room and tell them to bring a print out of the e-mail folder. Go around the room and ask each person to list who is waiting on a response and from whom.

If you do this each week, it should help projects stay on track and foster collaboration. Of course, the size of the group meeting should be kept small in order to keep the meeting times short.

One topic that will inevitably come up is “your priority is not my priority” in relation to response times. I suggest creating a form of Service Level Agreement (SLA) between co-workers. Everyone should be able to answer an e-mail within one business day. If you do not provide the answer or requested comment within a day, let people know when you will. In this example, the SLA is “one business day”.

An SLA will help ease the uncertainty that arises with co-workers who are slow to respond to e-mail. (in fact, take this beyond e-mail — voice mail should be included, too.)

ELAN Home Systems is hiring a full time web developer. The company has some really cool products and continues to grow. This is an opportunity for someone to come in and really make an impact. There are lots of things to add to help the business, its dealers, and consumers.

ELAN Web Developer Position PDF

Wondering how to put together a web page to sell something? Here are some tips for you to keep in mind when designing the page.

1. Keep the page focused on one thing — for example, don’t talk about web design in detail and web hosting in detail on the page.

2. Stick with one column — more than this can distract people. Use top navigation. This limits choices for the reader’s attention.

3. Make sure the copy you write is simple. Unless your readers are academic, make sure its easy enough for 8th graders to read.

4. Keep the landing page out of your standard site navigation. The landing page should link to other pages (see below), but the landing page should not be reachable except through the advertising link (example: from Google Ads).

5. Limit the actions on the page — again, keep it simple. Consider using trimmed navigation.

6. The image of whatever you are selling should be crisp, clear, and there should only be one of them.

7. Make sure your phone number is on the page and obvious. A recent study found that most conversions occur offline. People go online to learn and price shop. The majority of buying occurs in a “real” store.

8. Don’t ask for anything other than someone’s e-mail address. Demographic info is great, but do you really need to create a privacy question in the mind of the visitor? Always tell people what you are or are not going to do with the e-mail.

9. Have a great “Thank You” page and e-mail. Make it memorable.

Give these a shot and watch the conversions increase.