Nov 19, 2021
We must teach our people basic Web & Internet concepts.
Your employees are cooking my brain…
TL/DR: Your employees should all take my new fully accredited online course that teaches Web & Internet basics!
Over the last decade, I’ve worked and consulted for countless web-enabled companies with employees who know almost ZERO about the basics of the Internet and its important components. It’s a sad deal. Sometimes it makes my head feel like it will explode. At the end of each week, it’s a terrible use of my paid rates to teach your Head of… employees how to ‘Google It,’ or explain to them what SEO actually is, or teach them about image resolution and aspect ratio — but that’s what I do…often.
Talking to some of your employees feels similar to talking to my 80 year old father about software projects — he nods his head and acts like he understands, just to be nice, but I know he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t even ask me to elaborate, he just goes with it. He’s a great team player!
My father is not responsible for merchandising a $60million e-commerce business — oh no, he’s not. My father is not responsible for providing product requirements to a team of ten software engineers who cost your organization $280,000 per month — nope.
My new online course covers basic concepts like:
- What is the Internet?
- Servers
- Page loading
- Image file types (JPG, PNG, GIF, WEPB)
- Video fundamentals
- HTML fundamentals
- CSS fundamentals
- Basic Javascript identification
- How to report errors
- Google Analytics concepts
- SEO (search engine optimization concepts)
- Google Search Console concepts
None of these things are complicated. I’m almost embarrassed that I needed to create this online course, but I’m amazed every single week of my life how badly the world needs it.
When I ask your employees if they are familiar with Google Search Console, or ask them for a compressed JPG instead of a PNG, or ask them to filter by a Secondary Dimension in Google Analytics, or ask them to send me an error report with URL, screenshot, OS, and browser version, they give me the same reaction as my father. They nod and smile. THEY GOT IT. Don’t worry buddy!
So, when it comes to SEO, or reporting web page errors, or identifying an invalid line of HTML, why does my father know just as much as some of your employees who are responsible for millions, sometimes billions of dollars in Internet sourced revenue? This is really scary. It’s Terminator 2 levels of scary. The world is upside down, I swear it.
Let’s fix this problem together!
Please have all of your employees take my new accredited online course Web Fundamentals 101 which teaches Web and Internet basics.
Our modern employees are working with and around websites and software all day, every day. An e-commerce company is a great example organization. For a team of 20 people at an e-commerce company, 10 of those people may be touching the website each day:
- Designers
- Content writers
- Marketers for promotions / SEO contributors
- Merchandisers
- Product coordinators / ops people
- Executives / managers
- Consultants
In 2021, our people NEED to know basic web and internet concepts. Everything we think about or touch at work is influenced by our foundational assumptions about how the Internet works and its basic components.
Often at work we are not saying and understanding the same things. This is a massive problem inside teams, and externally when interfacing with consultants. This problem of misunderstanding due to a lack of foundations can result in crossed wires, poor planning, mistrust, and eroded employee morale.
When we say SEO, are we saying the same thing? When we say Google Search Console, do we both understand what it is used for? When we say “sitemap,” are we both talking about a standardized XML document that is submitted to search engines to help them efficiently locate our assets while crawling the web? When we say “the page is broken,” what exactly does that mean?
Improving our knowledge of foundational concepts of the Web and Internet can help with everything related to our business:
- Improved efficiency
- More shared assumptions between employees
- Better inter-team communication and coordination (this is particularly helpful interfacing with developers, creatives, and ‘skill position’ web employees)
- Better planning and estimations
- Shorter meetings!
- More employee confidence in daily tasks
- Improved employee morale
If you’re cheap, there is even a free version of my new course. My Dad also lovvvvves FREE, just like you. But if you opt for the paid version, your employees will be required to complete assignments in my Assignments Portal (a custom app that I wrote from scratch just for this course). The Assignments Portal takes information from the learning portion of the course into graded assignments that require skill development in the areas of image resizing, image sharpness, image color space, basic HTML and CSS, and identifying Javascript page errors. The paid version of my course also comes with a fully accredited certificate from the CPD Standards Board in the UK.
Check out my new accredited online course, Web Fundamentals 101.
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