Most of us are familiar with the infamous Apple ad – “There’s an app for that“.

It always gets me thinking… is the accumulation of apps and software our new obsession now?

One thing that I did a lot in the last year was to resist the apps, be it for the phone, web-based or desktop software for the business. Because these things don’t take up clutter in our homes and often is buried in Gigabytes large hard drives, we don’t think we are accumulating them. But we do. However, that’s a totally different path than where I was headed so let me come back to my original thought.

You don’t always need an app, a plugin, a new software to do what you have to do.

Just yesterday, I was looking trying to figure out how to switch my 2nd monitor from the right to the left. You know, I found software to do that? But there is absolutely no need for it because you can just drag the main monitor from left to right (under Display Properties settings in Windows).

Sometimes, I get to peek into the admin of other people’s WordPress sites. The plugins list is most interesting because I often find plugins that do exactly the same things. Then there are things that are better done by making one small change to the theme file than using a plugin.

I’m always amazed at the number of software or apps people would purchase or install and then neglect simple things like pre-filling forms for customers. Too often, I purchase something and am directed to the download page only to be told I have to opt-in to receive the product. Fine, I’ll do it but couldn’t you at least pre-fill my name and email for me so I don’t have to do it again?

You don’t need an app or even a shopping cart to do that.  All it takes is a few (really) simple lines of code and it makes a difference in usability and customer experience. We teach you exactly how to do that in “Little Personalization, Big Impact“.

What apps have you purchased but found they don’t really help that much or there’s a better way to do what you have to do without any app at all?