A few quick stats in the last month since the redesign…

Pageviews: +40.26%
Pages/Visit: +33.64%
Bounce Rate:  -50.51%
Average Time on Site:  +24.82

These stats are not skewed by anything since I haven’t written any blog posts, launched any sites, or had any other new links since the previous month.  These are based on average traffic.

BEFORE

AFTER

Some of the noticeable changes are

• 12 column grid based design
• Minimalistic look
• Enhanced navigation with subtle jQuery animation (with graceful degradation in IE7 and IE6)
• Current page indicator
• Info heavy footer (with contact and email newsletter signup forms)
• Removal of external links to recent projects
• Moved testimonials to About page sidebar
• Removed list of services and focused on the 2 core services we provide

We will constantly be evolving this site over the next year, running A/B tests, testing certain elements, to improve conversions where-ever necessary.  Check back for results of these A/B tests to see how colors, different wording, and images can affect the site.

Using the amazing project management platform, 5PM, I was able to pull all sorts of information necessary to create our project management status board pieces.  I love seeing when my people add a new progress note or if the “Other CWS Tasks” list gets cut in half.  I know stuff is being accomplished.

CWS Status Board Items

• Tasks assigned to me (via 5PM)
• Tasks assigned to others (via 5pm)
• Progress bars for tasks (via 5pm)
• Events in the next 7 days (via Google Calendar)
• Current time since we don’t have a clock (PHP)
• Current weather and tomorrow’s forecast (Yahoo Weather)
• RSS feeds for Digg, Lifehacker,  Smashing Mag, and Web Designer Depot (probably counter-productive)

Every container is automatically refreshed via AJAX so there is never a reason to manually refresh the page.  Every 30 minutes or so it will do an automatic full page refresh because Yahoo Weather doesn’t like the AJAX request for some reason but, again, no manual page refresh is required.

Why have a status board at all?

Think about how many windows or tabs you have open when you are working.  Think about the time it takes to navigate from 1 to the other and check what might be happening.  Imagine if you could always have a screenshot of the most important things going on regarding your company.  Rather than checking all your tabs, you just glance at your status board and see everyone all in 1 place.

Now if I can find a way to easily import Quickbooks data into this, this will be a super status board!  Any ideas on things to add?  How would you set up your status board?

The set up process took about 30 minutes to create the new buttons, pages, and inserting the necessary javascript code.  You install 1 piece of javascript in the original  and then another piece in the variations.  The 3 variations are below.

And now the results after letting it run for a few weeks.

As you can see the 2 variations have both outperformed the original at this time.  This simple test shows how useful this free service can be.  It will prove invaluable when testing call-to-action buttons, text, placement, forms, and just about anything else you can test.

This won’t be for everybody but for those that understand it, it can be another powerful weapon to greatly improve click-throughs and conversions.

I will probably let the test run a few more weeks to allow for 100 visitors on each variant to get a more accurate result.  Google recommends 100 visitors for each variant to reach an accurate conclusion.

Has anyone else had success with this tool or do they have any others to recommend?

Some time over the last week Connected Web Solutions officially turned three years old.  In these 3 years we’ve seen

• Countless (re)designs and apps developed
• Our first official product, alumLINK
• Clients have come and gone (I guess you can’t keep them all)
• The business has changed locations twice
• Worked in Costa Rica for a month (see www.mymovableoffice.com)
• A company car
• Annually increasing revenue, profits, and expenses (I guess the last is inevitable)
• A larger team
• And loads more but these are all that come to mind right now…

These 3 years have been a great learning experience not just in terms of web design and development but also in business and life.  I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all the clients and people that have worked with us in these three years.  Let’s hope the next 3 are just as exciting and successful!

“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

Leonardo da Vinci

3 years ago when starting the company I saw the need for this kind of product.  We had no good way of communicating with all the soccer alumni that went through my school.  We always thought it would be nice to have a way to communicate with all of them and provide job opportunities and a way to mentor the younger alumni or even current students.  alumLINK now makes this possible.

Head on over to http://myalumLINK.com and give it a test drive.  We are currently implementing this for teams, Greek organizations (fraternities/sororities), as well as athletic departments and even entire schools!

Setting Goals

• Double my client base in Harrisburg as well as the Lehigh Valley (achieved)
• Increase revenue AND profit by 25% a year until 2012 (achieved)
• Find subcontractors to lighten my work load (achieved)
• Improve quality of work and complexity of project (achieved)
• Become THE company to provide quality, standards-based, web sites (almost there)
• Drive my dream car (2006 Dodge Charger) that my business paid for (achieved, proof of the goal -scroll to the bottom)

Achieving Goals

Figure out all of the little milestones to reach your goal

For my financial goals, I figured out how many hours I needed to bill on average weekly to improve my numbers to what needed to be.

Successfully hit each milestone

Once I figured out these milestones, I watched my billable hours very closely. If it looked like I was going to be short I actively went looking for more work. This meant following up with current clients to see if we could improve or build on what they had as well as finding new clients and asking for referrals or partnerships.

Be Disciplined and Focused on Your Goals

It is easy to forget about your goals and push them away to do other things. To help with this I have a whiteboard right next to my desk that shows exactly how much I must bill on average weekly to hit the yearly revenue number. Along with this I have how many hours of billable time this would take as well as the average monthly revenue needed. I also have a list of open projects, late invoices, and end of contract dates. Having these metrics in front of me at all times keeps me very informed of my goals and what is necessary to accomplish them and how I am doing.

The Payoff

This is the best part.  Actually having your goals down in writing makes the payoff that much sweeter.  I look at that article above where my personal goal of driving my dream car within 5 years and it was written in late 2007.  I was able to buy the car in September of 2008.  I was able to accomplish a 5 year goal in less than 1 year.  The same goes for all the goals.  The fact that I have been able to increase revenue (28%) and profit (43%) each year since I wrote the plan makes me feel like I have accomplished something great.  Sometimes the goals don’t seem like great payoffs if money or objects are not involved but the lessons learned along the way in achieving the goals you set are invaluable.

I also heard on a recent Boag World podcast that this would probably be adopted for the host’s company as well in their future developments.

Yes, em values as font sizes will scale the text larger when you set the browser’s text size larger but many modern browsers have replaced the shortcuts for this with page zooming instead.  Yes you run the risk of zooming in so much there is horizontal scrolling but I think if your text size is large enough overall you can eliminate this problem.

No need to go into further detail but you can read the full article and listen to the podcast using the links above in the page copy.

What are you other designers/developers going to do out there?  Stop using em values and revert back to pixel font sizes?  Or stay with the headaches of em valued font sizes?

One of our most recent clients, MVP Software Inc., wanted to make use of some scrolling and fading elements.  Now a year ago I would have used some simple flash elements.  I know now that this is just overkill.  Using jQuery and the InnerFade plugin we were able to successfully rotate the client testimonials (RANDOMLY)  in the header (see the header on any page) and rotate the images on all the module pages (see rotating images here).

Another example would be the simple reveal that is used here for our FAQs for one of our clients.  We cannot disclose who this is for but look at this simple function.

This simple function basically will reveal the div following immediately after the h3 that is clicked. Once revealed, clicking the h3 again will slide it up and hide it. This makes things very easy if you have the answer wrapped in a div following the h3 that is your question. Now you must make sure the initially hide those div’s in the css but this function would require a ton more code to do strictly in Javascript with using jQuery. This just makes things a lot easier to digest and to code. See the basic reveal in action. UPDATED: 11/2009 for proper graceful degradation.  If Javascript is disabled the answer will automatically display.

These are just some basic enhancements to websites that are not really necessary but do add a nice touch.  Do I think jQuery is necessary in every project? No.  But do I think jQuery can make your life a lot easier when adding simple behavior details to web projects? ABSOLUTELY.

A couple weeks ago Gary Vaynerchuk (Host of Wine Library TV and super inspirational young speaker, @garyvee on Twitter) posted a link to his talk at the Big Omaha conference on his Twitter stream.  It was about an hour and the majority of it Q&A but after listening to it during my lunch break I felt refreshed and that I could take on any project and was itching to get back to work.  This is not the first great talk from a conference that I have seen on a Twitter stream.  I also follow Tim Ferriss (author or 4 Hour Work Week, @tferriss) and he always posts his talks at his conferences.  With my work/soccer schedule I can only get to so many conferences but by following certain people on Twitter and certain blogs you can get a lot of the footage from them.  No you will not get every keynote and lecture but you will still find some amazing content.

I would highly advise you all subscribe to Twitter and start following some industry leaders out there if for nothing more than pure inspiration.   I am sure that we have all been there in jobs, whether it’s corporate or entrepreneurial, where you hit that wall and can’t find any creative juice or drive left in you.  Go out there and find a talk or TV spot with Gary or Tim and within a few minutes you will find yourself recharged and ready to take on whatever is in front of you.  There are tons of other people out there to follow but I find great information from these guys in every blog post or talk.

1. Do your homework
   I was fortunate that I had someone to ask a handful of questions (the former GM at my pro soccer club) about starting a business before I took the plunge but that is not the case for all of you.   Learn about the appropriate paperwork to fill out in your state.  Figure out what kind of business entity you want (LLC, Corporation, Nonprofit).  Learn about registered trademarks and copyrights if they apply.  There are tons of books out there but I recommend contacting SCORE with a list of pre-made questions you have about starting a business to get your answers quickly.  SCORE is an amazing FREE service that is basically a bunch of retired business owners that offer their advice to people starting or growing small businesses.  They will usually meet with you if it is possible and do anything from market research to business plan to help from my experience.  Find your local SCORE office and take advantage of them.  They are volunteers so you know they are there to help you.
2. Set up an accounting system as soon as possible
   Unfortunately I was not introduced to Quickbooks until a few months into starting my company even after freelancing.  This made things difficult down the line but it has been a super useful tool.  Since using Quickbooks for the last 2+ years I have learned quite a bit about the software but even more about my business and managing the simple things.  It can be used for invoicing, tracking expenses, and handling a lot of other things.  They even offer a free version (Simple Start) that can track up to 20 clients (previously unlimited clients).  I have since upgraded to Pro and have already learned a ton more about my company as well as more control over what I am doing.  I still keep all invoices, purchase and payment receipts but using Quickbooks sure beats tracking things in a notebook which is what I did as a freelancer.
3. Save money on free (or very cheap) software
   Since I bootstrapped my business I only purchased the bare essentials of software.  I have been able to find some phenominal free alternatives to some standard software packages.
   • Mozilla Thunderbird – (Microsoft Outlook)
   • Open Office – (Microsoft Office alternative)
   • Quickbooks Simple Start – (Functions just fine for very small business needs)
   • Skype – (Has easily replaced an office line at a very low cost using SkypeIn)
   • Gimp – (Photoshop alternative)

4. Learn as much about the industry as you can
   I wish I could say that I read everything related to the business in the first couple years but I would be lieing.  I HAVE READ/LEARNED CONSTANTLY FROM THE DAY I CHOSE THIS INDUSTRY, NOT JUST THE FIRST YEAR OR TWO.  It’s the truth.  Every day I am either reading industry blogs, listening to podcasts, reading business or web related books, or  brushing up on the latest technologies (for instance venturing into Ruby on Rails and learning Javascript over the course of last year) and usually it’s all 3.  I always say that I have a huge thirst for knowledge and it’s true.  This will not only keep you informed but help a TON when pitching to potential clients.  I love teaching a potential client about something.  It could be anything from showing how the keywords they want to rank for are not in their page title all the way to explaining fluid vs fixed layouts and why there is a cost difference between them in development.
5. Be ready to work long hours but also manage your time
   For the first 4 or 5 months I had another job (professional soccer player) so I could only delegate so much time to my freelancing.  I did what I could to learn web standards and get up to speed with everything web design and biz related.  Once I retired and started CWS I had a lot of free time and not the biggest client load.  I could only continue to learn my trade and practice and refine my skills on my current as well as personal projects.  Once I started to pick up more and more clients I found myself having less and less time.  Pretty soon I found myself working up to 12 hours a day and maybe 2 or 3 of them were billable.  The others consisted of reading related blog posts/books, invoicing, billing, emailing current and potential clients, and setting up meetings.  For a while this worked out because I began to bill more and more hours but still was in front of  my machine almost all day.  Eventually it got to a point when I realized I was not managing my time well.  I have since implemented hours of work for the week related to business tasks.  This way I can plan my time much more efficiently.  I make sure to start my day at 10 so that when I get up around 8 I can take the first 2 hours to catch up on emails, plan meetings, and read any current web-related material.  I try to plan in 2 hour increments for at least 3 days in advance.
6. Network like crazy
   This is possibly where I had the most luck with everything.  Since while I was playing professionally I was always meeting a ton of people and working with a ton of kids.  Throughout my playing career I was able to meet a lot of great people who wanted to help me out.  I would honestly say that about 50% of our client base has been from some kind of soccer relationship.  Whether it was college alumni figuring out what I did or old teammates that needed some web help or they knew someone that knew someone that needed a website.  Again I say this being very lucky with all of my personal relationships but if you always make it point to network and meet people there are always people looking for services you can provide.  If you do a good job they will be the first person to refer to someone else.  If you do 5 great projects and get 1 referral each, you could have doubled your client base (and hopefully your revenue) without spending any money on marketing or advertising.

Hopefully this small list will give you some things to consider if you decide to venture into starting your own business.  I must say that is not the easiest thing in the world to do.  Be ready for long hours and little pay while you get established and put efficient systems into practice.  Also go out and read the 4 Hour Work Week  and see what you can learn about automating your business.  I wish I had read that book 3 years ago but it’s a tough road either way.  That being said it has been one of the most satisfying things I have ever experienced.