studiofellow

Love reading stories like this about what it's like in the early days of a new business. Those early decisions about what to do when you're struggling to get traction are so critical, but no one talks about them. Thanks for writing this.

Agreed, and I think those fall flat because they are trying to hide the fact that they're automated. There's nothing wrong with automation—just don't try to lie about it! Personally, I favor direct conversations over automated research. Even at smaller scale, it's just way more useful.

Like many here building our own businesses, I had to learn the hard way how to do customer research—on my own. I wrote this as a short summary of what I've learned. Thanks for submitting it!

Thanks! The chrome extension will let you create new "mods" for specific pages. When making a mod, it listens for any edits you make: CSS, HTML, text, etc. When you publish, it takes before & after screenshots and puts everything on a page you can share with other people.

I love that you are proving to others that it's possible to build a great business and still be healthy and happy. So often the message from startups is to sacrifice everything—even health and family.

I'm excited to see your business grow using this model, and hopefully others follow your example.

I really enjoyed this book—useful guide to communicating with clients. Has me thinking a lot more about what I write before pressing send.

From my perspective, this article is not suggesting people try to be someone else.

It reminds me of the popular book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking‎"

In that book, the author suggest that introverts fake extroversion in short bursts.

As an introvert myself, this is something I've done for a decade. It's tiring but pays off. Sometimes we introverts miss out on great opportunities because we don't stretch our comfort zone.

I think this article is good advice on small ways for introverts to put themselves out there and "fake extroversion".

This is a goldmine! Thank you.

This would be nice because it's always a good idea to have a fallback payment processor.

Love that this gem does things the right way, like including background jobs. As a Rails newbie trying to build billing, all the code/tutorials/gems I could find weren't nearly this high quality or robust.

Resonates so much. So, so many people never launch because of that fear. Good advice to reduce all the pressure on the single launch event. You can launch as many times as you want.

Congrats, the new site looks fantastic.

You 3 do some of the best interviews of any podcast out there.

I also sell the framework I use for the landing pages separately here: http://cascade.io

It provides more style options than designmodo's and fewer components, but I think they are both great options.

Heh, good point. Fixed. The explanation is obviously intended for non-technical folks, so the distinction is probably lost there, but I do want to be correct.

Sorry if this was unclear, but I do include copywriting & marketing advice in the project.

Thanks for this—very insightful. I do include copywriting. For the case study, Justin already had copy that was in great shape. Other clients might not, so I'll provide writing from scratch in those cases.

As for the conversion rates, totally agree that the metric I shared is somewhat vague. Every project has different goals, and sometimes even a fraction of a percent is a major win, such as with major display advertisers.

Also, your point about showing the increase in conversions for my projects is way more powerful. Unfortunately, since this is brand new, I don't have better data to share. Hope to have some soon.

I just sent Justin his new design yesterday. So, can't really blame him for not having it online yet. :)

There are quite a few good resources for developers to learn design.

Disclaimer: I wrote a book on this topic, but because of that, I know resources made by other people too.

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Sacha Grief’s ebook is good for an in-depth example:

http://sachagreif.com/ebook/

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Design for Hackers by David Kadavy is also well written. He explores the more traditional way to learn design, with the history of fonts, color theory, etc.

http://designforhackers.com/

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A different approach might be reading about creativity. My friend Paul Jarvis has some great books about creativity, especially his new one, The Good Creative, if you’re looking to get inspired:

http://pjrvs.com/books/

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Nathan Barry’s design books are great. He also has a course on Photoshop if you’re looking to learn.

http://nathanbarry.com/books/

http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/

http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/

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One of the best books about UI/UX/usability is Don’t Make Me Think:

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp...

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Great place for topic-specific books. Some of these are more advanced and intended for designers. I'd suggest these for after you read up on the basics.

http://www.abookapart.com/

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My book focuses on design fundamentals instead of advanced theory. It's intended as a starting point for things you can do right now. Actionable, focused on building skill instead of knowledge.

http://bootstrappingdesign.com

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Email me anytime if you need help. My email address is on the site above.

Edit: formatting

I think a lot of cultures (including much of startup culture) place too much emphasis on ideas. So many creative ideas really are stupid ideas.

However, that doesn't mean creativity should be criticized--it just means we need to teach people to do more than have ideas. Creativity comes into play when problem solving, and determining whether ideas are worthwhile, too.

edit: spelling.

Knowing the value of an idea is difficult until we see it in hindsight, already fulfilled. I think that pretending to know the value of a creative idea when it's merely an idea is presumptuous.

The article describes how the reception of creativity is all about risk--that we don't know its value immediately. I think this is a more logical way of looking at it.

https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/2193

Url should be /fonts, not /font.

In variables.less, change @fa-font-path to: "//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.0.0/fonts"

Thanks. I was also 'thinking aloud' on twitter that slowly building a following could eventually build up quite a bit of momentum.

But that momentum will never build unless you keep firing pellets, so to speak.

The piece I find most interesting here is not JK Rowling or book publishing, but the effects of 'intrinsic talent' and 'cumulative advantage' upon success.

The suggestion that the quality of my work might not contribute to my own success as much as I'd hope is disheartening.

I also wonder: how can I build up my own cumulative advantage?

A small community of designer/authors is releasing ebooks aimed at teaching design. I'm one of those authors.

I'm biased, of course, but I recommend looking into these books as they are vastly more practical and beginner-friendly than most design books (which are usually intended for already-experienced designers).

Learning design is tough because of all the information thrown at you. You're supposed to master color theory, the history of typography, difficult design software, and many more advanced topics, seemingly all at once. The ebooks below are not going to shape you into a design expert, but they'll give you an entry point into learning. The most difficult part is figuring out where to start.

Here are a few links for you:

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Step by Step UI Design by Sacha Greif

http://sachagreif.com/ebook

-Shows process of designing a web app UI. Short with lots of examples.

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Designing Web Applications by Nathan Barry

http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/

-From what I can tell, the focus is on usability, interaction design. (I haven't read this one, but Nathan knows what he is doing.)

-Nathan also has a separate ebook about mobile:

http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/

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Bootstrapping Design by Jarrod Drysdale (This is my ebook.)

http://bootstrappingdesign.com

-I focus on teaching design fundamentals and how to practice design so you can get better. You'll get a lot of "do this, don't do that" kind of advice.

-If you're interested, email me and I'll shoot you a promo code. (My email address is on the site.)

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* Edit: formatting

I'm disappointed that instead of trying to educate new entrepreneurs, the OP is discouraging them. The tone is incredibly condescending.

It's like he just heard of bootstrappers, and instead of saying, "Hey that's awesome, let me tell you what I've learned," he says "You'll never be one of us real entrepreneurs. Want a job?"

Completely disagree with this example of sketching.

Sketches should be visceral, messy, and fast. The entire purpose of sketching is to get the ideas out as quickly as possible.

I don't understand the purpose of creating preliminary sketches that you then redraw on nice paper. Are you trying to design a UI or make a pretty picture?

Also, throw sketches away? Are you crazy? Keep them. Later when you are adding a feature or changing the UI, you'll be glad to have those ideas to return to.

I use whatever pen is sitting around (usually the cheapest money can buy), and whatever paper is handy (usually scrap printer paper with stuff on the other side). My sketches are ugly and I take no pride in them.

The widget shown in the post isn't that great of an example. I'd have no idea how to use a UI like that in a real context. Also, it seems like you just chose to build the very first thing you sketched. You say design is iterative, so where are all the other concepts?

Sorry to be so brutal. I appreciate the spirit of your post. I agree with your rationale for sketching, but your examples/practices don't seem to match it.

I tried to indicate your first point in the post:

> But for small startups like mine, ...

> Brand awareness doesn’t exist if your customers number in the hundreds.

I think it's clear that I'm talking about landing pages for a certain type and size of business, and not all websites in general.

Also, thanks for the suggestion about the blog theme. I hacked that together really quickly, and it could use some improvements.

Edit: formatting.

Thanks for bringing this up. I'm the OP. Please note my response to a similar comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416724

You're right that the logo is not only below the fold. There is a dimmed version in the top right corner, but the point where I really introduce the app is below the fold. I admit that the title is slightly inaccurate because of that. It just made for a snappier headline.

The main point is to place the logo low on the visual hierarchy. The dimmed logo you are referring to is not very obvious. Visitors will read the headline before they see it.

Also note, everyone is noticing that occurrence of the logo right away because I explicitly point out the prominence/location of the logo in the post. If you were visiting the site without that context, you wouldn't notice the dimmed logo.

Thanks. The point is to place the logo low on the visual heirarchy. 'Below the fold' is just a snappier (and also somewhat less accurate) way of stating that point.

That's a great example. Although unfortunately many newspaper websites are placing ads in that location.