About 10 days ago my wife learned about a web site called Freecycle. It basically gets people in a city on an email list (A YahooGroups list) for the purpose of giving and recieving stuff. The rules are, you can post a message of a OFFER to give something away or a NEED of something. Then someone who wants what you’ve got or has what you need emails you and a transaction takes place. The catch is anything offered has to be free. It’s a pretty neat idea to help folks with unwanted things find a home for them. In the 10 days we’ve been on it we’ve gotten rid of the Fitness Flyer we weren’t using, an old worn out Weber grille, and an Epson printer that worked but had the habit of spewing and smearing ink on the page every now and then. The printer was gone within 24 hours of us getting our new one. Additionally, we picked up a new Casio keyboeard (and stand) to replace our eldest daughter’s that just quit one day and my wife picked up some kind of designer skirt outfit.
Great idea, go check it out and see if your city’s on the list.
Month: September 2004
Attention Retailers
Attention traditional retailers: The Internet is coming. Correction, it’s already here. You can buy anything you would in a local store – your store – online. You need to realize that these stores are your competition. All the talk about the advantages they have in not maintaining a showroom and that shipping must be accounted for just won’t wash anymore. We are cross shopping them to you. Frankly, just as they have advantages over you, so do you over them. You have real people that can help us. You have the actual product that we can see and touch. You have the instant gratification factor; with them I must wait for it to arrive. The playing field is not that un-level.
I write this because I have made two large purchases recently and been hassled when trying to apply your price match policies to a web based business. Kudos to Lowe’s for matching Internet prices on the 550 sq. ft. (that’s$1,500 worth) of Bruce wood flooring I bought last fall. Shame on them that I had to try 3 different stores before I found a manager that would do it (in violation of your policy, I think.) Shame on Sears on refusing, at 2 stores before I gave up, to price match on the Weider Crossbar Platinum 800 I just bought to the price at Home Shopping Network. You lost a $600 sale, but I still got my home gym.
It’s time to start treating them like competitors, because they are and while you ignore them or whine about how unfair it is, they are taking your customers away.
Thank you.
Church websites
Mean Dean at Heal Your Church Website is on vacation and has gotten a couple of guests to post some stuff while he’s gone. Check out this article from Mike Boyink titled Web Sites Are Easy.
In this excelent article, he makes the case that setting up the site – the mechanics of it – is easy, it’s the content that’s hard. Why? Becasue we forget that the web isn’t about information exchange or moving data back and forth between computers. It’s about people exchanging ideas, ultimately it’s story telling. He writes:
So here’s the core frustration of what’s starting to become a personal rant (sorry Dean, you did ask for something I was “passionate about”..;)). In one corner, we have the church website. No, let’s not call it a website. Let’s call it a “Story Container”. A searchable, accessible, readable, always-available, hyperlinked, cross-referenced story container. In the other corner, the Church has the best story. Indeed – The Greatest Story Ever Told. And countless related personal stories – stories of great faith, triumph over addictions, persistence through illness, gain from loss, and undeserved grace.
But we go on… presenting our churches like products – telling people why they’ll like our church (Relevant! Great Music! Fresh Coffee!) but so rarely simply telling the stories of what our church, our faith, and our God has meant to us, and the true change seen in our lives because of it. What is it going to take to wake the modern church to the power of connecting the two, and filling our websites with our own stories? ….
It’s those stories that members need to tell and visitors need to hear. Those stories are going to move people closer to God. And if our church websites aren’t moving people closer to God then we’re wasting our time.
C’mon. Tell me a story of when God was good to you. Oh..before you start…I’ll bet there are other people that would like to hear it too. Can I put it somewhere where they will find it when they need to?
Powerful stuff. time to call my church webmaster. 🙂
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