That's been my whole experience of setting up this business venture. I didn't know so much - and it's lucky that I was so pig-ignorant because I may have been even more daunted by what lay ahead. Ignorance can be bliss.
The website display issue I had turned out to be an easy one to fix. Thanks to Raj, who I'm pretty sure was sitting typing at his laptop in his boxer shorts in his lounge room. At least I hope he was wearing boxer shorts. For hygiene reasons. And because of the three playful cats who can't resist suspended soft toys.
Is my stereotyping showing?
Anyway, Raj asked me specifically what display issues I was having. So I told him about the website being cut off on smaller monitors. And my confusion because I'd figured that what was on my screen would surely just be shrunk to fit whatever the viewer was viewing on.
I'm pretty sure I heard eye-rolling over our internet connection. And hysterical, disbelieving laughter. Then a deep, pull-it-all-together-and-try-to-act-professional-mate breath. And then he calmly typed in a few questions.
"What have you done to try to fix this?"
Nothing - apart from considering asking everyone who complained about the display to get the same size monitor as me.
"Can you see the vertical and horizontal lines on the website template?"
Of course I can. I'm just techno-stupid, not blind.
"You must keep all of your content between those lines."
Ah! Light bulb goes on and all is clearly visible. So computers don't actually encourage you to color outside the lines just because you're feeling creative. Not like that grade 5 teacher that I had who used to wear patchwork hippy skirts with embroidered tops and vests whose name I can no longer remember because it's been pushed out by all this newly-learnt computer stuff. Those lines weren't just there to help me line things up symmetrically.
It did make me wonder if I should have pressed publish on the day that I'd set as my "I'd like to have it up and running by then' date. But if I hadn't pressed publish I wouldn't have gotten the feedback that it wasn't quite right for everyone.
I also wondered momentarily if I should be embarrassed by presenting such an imperfect product to a world that expects perfection. Only momentarily though. Then I thought "Nah!" I'm so old that most of the pride's been beaten out of me and my boo-boos make good topics for blog posts. And just because the website isn't perfect doesn't mean that the tights aren't. I've been in the website business for all of two months but I've been making tights since I was pregnant with Josh 27 years ago. So I know what I'm doing there.
No orders yet but it's early days. I'm working on spreading the word. Hmmm - marketing. Another new skill to learn.
