lourish.com, the grow your own/share your own gardening swap site, launched earlier this month for gardeners to swap their surplus home grown fruit and veg with people near them. The free site was conceived, built and then promoted by Lourish’s founder Dave Bower for a little over £1000 after he quit his job to do something “less corporate”.
In his presentation Dave will describe the ideas behind Lourish, the challenges of single-handedly building a site with almost no money, the use of social media for free online promotion and will look at the future of lourish.com.
2. Coming up... A little background Before you start Building a public website Promoting – If you build it, they're really unlikely to ever bother coming Wrap up and Q+A
3. I'm great, me... 10 years software engineering 5 years leading dev teams for Internet start-ups C#/Java/Grails development Gardener
5. The need for Lourish Gardening sites are all rubbish Community gardening not involving 20-40 group I had a LOT of cucumbers Job driving me insane!
6. Before you start Get a grown-up to help you Bounce ideas Keep work options open Stop buying stuff!
7. Low cost start up You don't need a new PC/server/phone/shoes a company (yet) Buy domains Free email + docs from Google Free developer tools SAAS may be expensive in the long run, but it has low initial cost
8. The tease Internet presence, you will need... Holding page Blog Vague but exciting details Gather email addresses Survey (WUFOO, Survey Monkey) Email form
9. Designing Fewer features Cut out the unnecessary screens/features/details Make common case simple Leave the absolute bare minimum Create real pages Involve a designer as early as possible Agree cost and time scale up front if you can They know their stuff – take notice Find someone interested in what you're doing
10. Implementing If you don't code... Kiss goodbye to building a website on a shoestring! Find someone you really trust who doesn't just code but who also manages developers Managing developers is really difficult Software is hard to estimate Financial incentives Other incentives
11. Implementing Thank God you can code... Choose technologies with longevity What are your strengths? Outsource everything else Plan realistically Missing milestones? Work out why Don't be afraid to completely change direction Move in to ideaSpace!
13. Test It! Really, really test it Unit test, TDD even better Functional test UI Test Load test Staging environment To beta or not to beta? Users expect a working site, “beta” label or not
14. Launch! (And you thought you'd done the hard part...) It's easy to build a website, it's very difficult to get one noticed Promoting is as important as building Good support experience can create devoted users Use monitoring to provide feedback
15. Promotion It's not rocket science Consistent communication throughout Use 1 key message, with maybe 1 or 2 subsidiary messages Expect Apathy Insults Mistrust “XYZ.com does it better” Keep promoting
16. Promotion - Email Use emails gathered from teaser site People will forget they registered...
17. Promotion - Email Expect to be marked as spam if you didn't have double opt-in Use mailing service Mailchimp / Campaign Monitor / Constant Contact Protection from “spammer” status Monitoring Expect low conversion from email to site
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19. Promotion – Social Media Newsgroups No self-promotion! Use Google alerts to find out what’s being said where Blogs Support the site through a blog Promote blog through Twitter and Facebook Get influential bloggers to write about you Add blog stream to site for easy CMS!
20. Promotion – Social Media Facebook Like Company page Insights Twitter Use follows to position yourself Use link shorteners for tracking (bit.ly, twitpic etc) Keep posting updates or risk looking dead!
21. Promotion – Social Media Integrate into site APIs Single sign on News feeds Give a reason for users to promote site
22. Promotion – Press Press releases Use a story Local papers need local angle Targeted – one key message Get it noticed Journalists are lazy, write their articles!
23. Promotion – Press Radio and TV Get key message into every answer! Build “bridges” Don't expect a deluge of new visitors! Wrong medium for converting users Get link on their website Promote press appearances via social media
24. Promotion – Grassroots Invites Trusted 1 in 3 invite 1 in 10 invites converted Local champions / Virtual champions
25. Promotion – SEO Quality links to site (BBC) Sensible page titles Use image alt attributes Write copy with keywords Home page Blog Choosing a “meaningless” domain name helps!
26. Monitor Google analytics Goals Traffic sources SEO Google alerts See what's being said & respond Bit.ly Facebook insights Wordpress
27. Support Responsibility to help users keep site running and innovating Respond professionally Answer quickly Respond only once to “chat” Use pseudonyms Reply during office hours
28. Eleven Lourish Lessons Get help (even if it’s from a soft toy) Early design input Build absolute minimum Concentrate on strengths, outsource weaknesses Changing your mind is OK but stick to your beliefs Release early and often A website is a responsibility Promotion is everything Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Network DO IT NOW
29. A Website on a Shoestring Free software and SAAS Fewer features Get designer in early Promotion is free
Some details about me and about LourishNot a course on building a website!Talk about designing, implementing and promotingTell the lessons I've learnt and give some useful guidance to anyone building a dynamic website on no money.The slides will concentrate on the lessons but I'll elaborate with some of the stories of getting Lourish to where it is today – 3 weeks in and 300 users strong
The ego building bitI’m no expert!Gently fondling a cucumber
Demo> Make offer> Show exchange SN IntegrationInformal swapsMake money? If proves a success may try to cover costs
General need for better web presence for gardenersNobody has done a really strong web2.0 gardening site involving communityMost are just another forum or basic SN site
Things go much faster with helpSomeone to bounce ideas offYes, the job was crappy, but at least it paid!If you're really going to buld it on a shoestring you'd better start saving the little money you have!
Judge interest in site by volumeAnswers questions!Gathers emails
More features = More difficult education Mixed messages Longer dev More bugs(Map of swaps)Real pages = faster in long run
Financial incentivesoptions, deferred paymentOther incentivescomfy chair, big monitor, good coffee, some input
Meet milestones by promising them to someoneLourish was going to be a community garden planner
ATM all on one virtual boxdesigned to scale to 3 tier with load balancingS3 data buckets for MySQLCloud foundry to deploy + monitor
SeleniumBe confident about loadUnless it's a site for techies don't “beta”
Key message join site to swap instead oft shopOther messages Environmental - Cut waste, lower food miles Use up your surplus
SPF records
~400 emails = 50 sign-ups
Promotion through social networks is still trusted
Facebook connectTwitter @Anywhere
Get it noticed - hand deliver, gimmick, email, follow up by phoneA national piece may generate a lot of poor quality traffic.A piece in a local newsletter can provide high conversion as it's trusted
Bridge - “Big society”One slot on local radio will not increase visitors to your site!TV will be one 20 to 30 second response, could be heavily edited
Need to improve invite conversionLeafleting unlikely to provide high conversion
