Building A Startup: Closing In

Due to for some unforeseen circumstances, the startup has been delayed by a few weeks. The quick story is that Barclay’s lost our papers for a new bank account. So we’re switching to Lloyds TSB and Cardnet. Cardnet will take us at least 10 days to get active. (Thanks to knowing the bank manager we actually got a new business account up in 2 days!)

As we draw in closer there is a lot more things to be thinking about. I want to add a few more features, but I think David Smalley of Litmus said it best to me. To paraphrase:

Focus on the money first, worry about the ideals later. You will have many launches every time you launch a new feature.

I think this sums it up the perfect mindset for a startup: Get the minimal viable product out NOW, get some interest and it will help shape your product.

I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on how they built their startup via IM, email or comments.

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Rails Rumble Has Ended. Our app did not make it.

Rails Rumble has ended and unfortunately we couldn’t finish our application in time. While we had a very basic idea we did not foresee two major architectural changes and more importantly some personal drama. There is no fault on any member of our team and it’s a shame but I am very glad we participated all the same. I believe fully in the Rails Rumble idea and what it does for our community.

The premise was to create an application that sent you a SMS or an email you when it found a new term matching a Twitter Search you created. This was handy if you wanted to be alerted to people calling your name (especially at a conference or such that could be time vital.)

It’s a great shame that we did not get it out, but who knows, if there is some interest we may bring it back from the dead after the judging finishes.

I want to thank my Team, you can see them here.

I wish everyone good luck on their application. I can’t wait to see what you all have done :)

You can see what is left of our efforts at sidetrackapp.com

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Weekly Round Up: 17th October 2010

I am going to try and sporadically start writing a mini wrap-up of the week. I’ll be posting both some of my favourite tl;dr links, links that I’ve Tweeted and others not yet mentioned. Thanks to MrJaba for the idea.

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The Web Business: Secrets of Pricing

Talking about pricing can be taboo. I remember the difficulty I had when I first entered the industry and tried to decide a competitive price. Everyone kept it close to their chest as if it is part of their secret to success and of course they are scared they will lose the ability to change their price for future projects.

I have seen an uncanny amount of people either overcharge or under-charge their pricing. Pricing is worked out by what your ego thinks it should accept against how many requests you have.

London Made‘s rates vary depending on the service and who is asking. There is a lot of variable factors but the few things that do not change are the fact we work our socks off to do the best job we can and every project is priced differently depending on many factors.

The two biggest tips in pricing I will give you is to be cautious and do not under-price or over-price. Secondly, is to estimate 20-30% longer than you originally suspect. There will undoubtedly be issues that you have not yet thought of. If you under-estimate and then report to your client you will need to take more hours, your client will be pissed. If you overrun your first quote into the 30% buffer and still do not make the full quote, you will look like a hero.

Pricing is an art, not a science.

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Building A Startup: The First Few Weeks

I am finally biting the bullet and investing $10,000 into a startup I am creating. It is all the spare cash I have and then some and it is a sink or swim moment. Already life has changed significantly and I am starting to think everyone should create a startup at least once.

I gave the green light to my developers on Tuesday, completed site-wide design and have started investing in various services so that I have time to set them up. We have storyboarded and worked a timeframe out that sees us finishing in 3 or 4 weeks from now.

I already feel anxious waiting to launch the startup. I do not want someone to come out with the same idea in that time and render my time and money useless. I always tell my clients to slow down with their rush and that the execution is the most important thing. Being on the other side of the fence has me in a completely different mindset. Of course, I know that I will not release until the execution is satisfactory.

It is very hard not to think that my startup will be a resounding success and I will be a millionaire overnight. Realistically I know that this will not happen and the maximum chance is that we earn ten thousand max in the first month. I still see this as unlikely. Hopefully it will be a success but even if it is not, I will be happy that I did it.

We shall wait and see how the next few weeks planned out. However, I am excited and nervous. I have never run a startup before, only built and designed. I just have to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

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I dribbble.

Chances are you have heard of the awesome design snippet sharing community “Dribbble” This is a post on my views on the website, examples of my snippets and my  favourite designers on Dribbble.

I have posted a selection of my works on there. While most of them are unfinished, as they start to get more refined I will be posting them so you can see the design process from rough to production. That includes initial screens of the website you see here, the grayscale version of London Made and the final version and even the new version of this website (that I will eventually stick with for a long time.) That even includes my secret new startup that will be out in a month (I’ve invested a ton of money and am working on it as we speak.)

I prefer criticisms of my work over general kindness. I really want my designs to be extra ordinary and until I know what’s wrong with them, I can’t take them to the next level.

The Effects

Jeff Croft came out with the Tweet the other day:

Dribbble has made it abundantly clear is that tons of people you’ve never heard of are as good or better designers than the “weblebrities.”

If you know me then you know my view on the web celebrities. I have felt what Jeff’s tweet embodies for as long as I can remember and someone as prominent as Jeff saying it is a great thing.

My Favourites

There are tons of great designers on Dribble out there and I could not mention them all, but my absolute favourites are:

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Case Study of London Made

Once we finished the wire-framing of London Made, I knew that I wanted to write a Case Study for our strategy and design choices. This post will explain our process and hopefully inspire some changes with your design.

As with all websites, ours has many design decisions that are not obvious. Even the most simple websites like Google have had countless hours of design decisions; “Is this really needed? What can we remove?” If you are looking for a more involved case study, I recommend nGen work’s latest series of posts.

Version 1

We ran a series of A/B Tests and to confirm a lot of our suspicions.

Our Goals

  1. Email us.
  2. More time on page (which would hopefully affect the first.)
  3. Download a vCard for later.
  4. Click on our Twitter.

Discoveries

  • The use of phrase ‘happy clients’ is particularly good in increasing conversions.
  • Usage of the word “you” helps increase conversions.
  • People downloading vCards did not increase conversions. It made people put contacting us off to later. (We had to assess this by our experience too obviously.)
  • The shorter the Headline Pitch, the better.
  • The less the content in general the better. Keep it strong, keep it short.
  • People found it hard to find the Contact button.

We decided that we would not realign the design but start it from scratch because there was a lot of fundamentals that needed changing. There comes a time when it’s just best to start from a blank canvas than building on something that is too different from what you want.

Decisions

Version 2: Initial Mock

  • As people could not find the Contact buttons, using the rule of thirds we added a Contact Us button into three of the four corner quadrants.
  • To condense information we decided to make the main area displaying our contact details to have a similar experience to the real tangible world – we added a business card to the top left. Being a large chunk of black on a mostly white body gives enough contrast that people’s eyes are drawn to it
  • We added a slideshow with captions and impacting headlines. The transitions are to help move the eye towards it and keep an awe factor.
  • We wanted to keep all the text (or at least the headlines if needed) above the fold.
  • Paired down every extraneous piece of information unless asked for.

Version 2 Final.

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