Andrey and I have a panel up for voting for SXSWi 2011. Andrey quit his job to start his own Y Combinator backed company, and I quit my job to freelance (successfully) and am now in the process of starting my own job. Vote for us! We’d love to share what we’ve learned.

Check out the panel submission and (please) vote for us!

We decided on a non-traditional layout for the homepage, with the second most important page being the jobs page. Everything came out wonderfully. Very quick turn around time, high attention to detail, and a smart and forgiving client. Great project.

Hi, my name is Tracy. The wedding industry is huge, overpriced, and with insane profit margins. I’m looking to disrupt it with WeddingType.

In wedding invitations alone, there are two options: spend hundreds of dollars for custom designed invitations (expensive but pretty), or do-it-yourself (cheap but ugly). I want to build a web application catering to the price sensitive couples who have an aversion to Comic Sans.

A do-it-yourself wedding invitation kit costs $45, while professional wedding invitations are hundreds or thousands of dollars. With WeddingType, the service will guide the user through a constrained flow of inputs which will populate a set of pre-designed templates with professional typography that they can print out and get hitched. The completely automated service will charge $25 and send the user a PDF by email.

My goal is to get this out really fast and start making revenue from the start, then see how big we can grow it. From here, there are multiple ways of increasing value and revenue — licensing to wedding invitation template manufacturers, selling custom design solutions, offering templates through the site, etc. Large scale, could sell templates through the site, printing and mailing like Moo.com.

Current landing page of WeddingType

I freelanced and worked at a startup for five years as the primary designer/jack-of-all-trades for everything relating to their web properties, including analytics, usability, design, HTML/CSS, and multivariate/AB testing. I need a technical partner who is enthusiastic about the business and a web programming whiz. Preferably in the Bay Area, and if everything goes right, we’ll apply to Y Combinator for the next Winter session.

Intrigued? I’d love to meet you, perhaps work on a small project together.

Find out more about me:

• http://limedaring.com
• @limedaring
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyosborn

Ping me at tracy@limedaring.com if you’re interested in my idea and would like to meet for coffee to discuss!

Post a screenshot or photo of your name (or screen name) doodled. Here’s mine, for reference:

I did mine really quick, and I don’t want anyone to spend too much time on this. But have some fun sketching out your name and do something fun with it. :) Post a comment here, ping me on Twitter, or email me at tracy@limedaring.com.

I’ll announce my favorites on Friday, June 4th.

Holy crap, that was a lot of cool invites! I kind of regret doing this contest, since all that entered deserve an invite, and I only have two. Here are the entries I received:

Alexander

Andrew - WINNER

April Mains

Jacob - WINNER

Jonny

Maximilian

Mushroom

n0s0ap

Oriol

My two personal favorites are Jacob and Andrew, and I will be contacting them for their email addresses. If you didn’t win, if I get more invites I’ll come here first, and I’ll let others who have invites to pick from these awesome submissions as well. :)

In order, we have a graduation hat, paper, graduation scroll, laptop, book, A plus, monitor, protractor, microscope, pencil, calculator, and lightbulb icons, in shades of navy blue, and they should work on any light colored background.

Like them? Want them? Download them here. I’d appreciate a tweet (“Just downloaded @limedaring’s education icons, they’re awesome” if you wish *wink*), or share this post on any social media sharing websites.

Follow me on Twitter if you want to stay updated!

One of my major goals of this summer is to expand my experience with working with fun projects, fun people, and new companies. I’m not looking for full-time work at the moment, rather, small part-time projects with companies, especially start-ups, around the Bay Area (but if you want me to work pro-bono in exchange for transportation/room/board, I’ll fly anywhere in the world).

Take a look at my resume, or contact me at tracy@limedaring.com with project details (or just to say hello!).

This is the most exciting time in my life, and I’m looking forward to the next few months.

♥ T

EDIT: I have started the search for a cofounder for my startup idea and will be putting freelancing on hold for the time being. However, I’m still available to be flown out to work on design (as mentioned above), but can only allocate a week at a time. If you’re interested, send me an email and let me know!

Panels

Honestly, the worst part of the conference is the panels. Since the conference is so huge (14k attendees!), there is at least six or more panels and talks to go to at any given time, and hundreds overall throughout the conference. These panels are in large part voted through a popularity contest, which unfortunately leads to (in my opinion), panels that exist for no other reason than to promote the speakers.

I had a large problem finding panels with any actionable information (expounded in my notes from the talks below) - mostly, the speakers would talk, the attendees would nod, but no one would learn anything useful.

Ranting aside, I did attend five panels, and took notes for four:

1. SXSWi – Painfree Design Signoff with Paul Boag
2. SXSWi – The Right Way to Wireframe (Part 1)
3. SXSWi – ‘Seed Combinators’: Startup Incubators 2.0
4. SXSWi – Your User Interface is your Laboratory

I also attended a “core conversation” about funemployment, which turned into less about making it work while unemployed and making the most of the conversation, and more about getting employed. Sigh.

Pro-tips

I tweeted a few things throughout the festival so I wouldn’t forgetting little nuggets of wisdom that I would think of. Here are a few…

• “#sxswgoal: Eat dinner with a different group of people every night.” I wrote this before I decided to use “protip”, but it’s still great advice. Don’t stick with the friends you have, there are literally thousands of people at SXSW. Andrey and I even found someone randomly off the street to join our group for dinner.
• “#sxswprotip: Head to panels early to grab a side seat with access to power. They fill up 30 minutes (at least) before the sessions.” Don’t be a lazy bum (if you actually decide to attend panels) — good seats are vital to really enjoying a panel, so make sure to get there early. Every session I went to was wall-to-wall with people.
• “#sxswprotip: Started following too many? Use http://tweepsect.com to unfollow those that don’t follow you back or inactive accounts.” A shout out to Andrey who built this — this is a great app to discover all you’ve started following and aren’t following you back after the conference (and unfollowing if you wish).
• “#sxswprotip: The Starbucks at Screenburn is empty - avoid the lines outside and caffeinate here.” The obvious Starbucks at the corners of the convention center get swamped with people. Find the hidden ones (like the one they put in Screenburn) to get your latte faster than 30 minutes.
• “#sxswprotip: Figure out your dinner-mates before dinner. Everyone has a plan but me.” If you’re going to eat dinner with a different group each night, figure out who they are by lunch. Not fun to wander around looking for a group of people and everyone on Twitter is already tweeting about eating already.
• “#sxswprotip: SXSW isn’t about the knowledge from panels, it’s about the connections you make.” Reiterating my point that the panels tend to be useless, SXSW is about the people you meet and stay connected with. I met designers, developers, founders, VCs, newbs, l33t h4x0rs, and really cool, utterly normal people. Awesome.

In short: Don’t pay for a ticket, and make the most out of meeting people. And definitely go; far too many people I know miss SXSW every year.

What is this strange graphic in the background? It’s an illustration I created for a friend to display at his booth at SXSW. Eye lasers, pew pew pew!

What is AB or split testing? Find something you want to test (such as a headline), find two headlines you want to test against eachother, and use a product like Google Website Optimizer to split your users between the two tests (50% going to one test, and 50% to the other). Track the results, and whichever test performs better “wins” the test and gets implemented.

Examples

Each company went over several tests they ran and the results they saw. I have pages of written notes on the results which I won’t transcribe here, simply because running these tests on your website is what’s important - not the tests that others have run. Their results are not going to translate into your results until you test them yourselves.

If you’re new to testing, here’s a small run-down:

1. Determine your metrics for “conversion” - conversion what we’re trying to improve. This is faily simple on a ecommerce site, and would be the amount of orders completed. Conversion could also be signups for a newsletter, increased page-views, or time spent on a site as well.
2. Determine what you want to test. You can test almost anything on a website, but the best way to start is to take a look at the funnel. The funnel is the path you want your visitors to take on your website, such as Homepage — > Product Page — > Shopping Cart — > Checkout — > Payment — > Thank You Page. It’s essential to have analytics installed before this point (such as Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, and Mixpanel) where you can set up tracking of visitors through the funnel. Once we have that set up, determine your problem points; how many visitors leave before reaching the final page in the funnel, and where does the biggest drop-off occur — after the product page? After the shopping cart page?
3. Once you have the “problem” page determined, choose elements to test within the page, such as the headline, the “add to cart” button, etc. A typical split test means you’ll test a new version of an element (such as a different headline) against the existing to determine whether you can improve it or not.
4. In whatever product you’re using to split test, it’ll help set you up with creating the test. Typically I recommend tests to run no shorter than a week, recommended two weeks. First, your test needs to be statistically significant and your testing package will likely let you know when you’ve reached this point. Secondly, even if you have enough visitors in the first day to reach significance, there are day-to-day and week-to-week variations that can affect the results; your Monday visitors may have an entirely different pattern than your Wednesday visitors. Running for at least a week means you can average out the difference between the days, and running for two weeks means you can average out between two weeks.
5. If the new version is declared the “winner”, implement and enjoy the improved conversion!

A large problem with split testing is it gives you a strictly numbers based view of your website and doesn’t give you the “whys” - you might know one headline performs better than another but only be able to guess as to why. During this session, Jared Spool came up to give a very important point - that there could be very large usability problems with a website that split testing cannot fix. It’s essential to also run usability tests in tandem with split tests - watch the user go through your site and find out the reasons why something might not work. Combining these both is the optimal situation.

This topic is one near and dear to my heart and I was disappointed to find it so poorly covered. Hopefully this post helped clear up some of the “whys” of split testing, and not simply some company’s results.

Define Seed Accelerator:

Find a whole bunch of startups at once, with a small amount of money, make them move to you, have events, give advice, and at the end, you have a “demo-day” where they can pitch to investors to make money. The goal is to help early stage startups - mentorship and community. The money isn’t the most important part, it’s helping. Creating jobs.

How to pick the right seed combinator

Location can be very important. Metrics: it depends on what you do and who you want to work with - working with similar businesses and customers. Paul Graham says that it’s two parts: if you’re geographically constrained, pick the closest, otherwise, pick the “best”. It’s like picking a girlfriend (the one who’s right for you) or a surgeon (the best - he thinks this is the best). Look at the mentors and see how they can fill gaps in your company.

What they aren’t - misconceptions

Don’t look at just the money - look at the network, and the network of investors around the program, not just valuation. It’s also a myth that it’s for really young people - the median age is about 27. Also, people need to value the alumni network more - their start-up can fail and they could hop to another successful start-up.

What is the subjective reason to pick the companies?

They’re looking at the relationship between the co-founders, the commitment to the program - an intellectual captcha has been added to their forms. It’s not about the idea - it’s about the founders. “A pretense to having a conversation”. Which makes it complicated because people change. It’s also about “awesome”. Not the idea, it’s the people. People they really want to help out. Your problem also should be valuable, and you should be the right person to solve it. Smart people, energetic, but also with integrity. As they go through the interviews, they want to be more and more excited about the company you want to build. Be open to change - not to say, you can’t be stubborn, but be willing to accept advice.

The brand of the seed accelerator

YCombinator initially had no brand, but now it does. Others are newer and are working on it. Any smart investor will care more about your startup rather and the brand of accelerator that you joined. VCs are now doing a lot of 100-200k “little” investments. $5,000 is the new $5,000,000.

What are the hard costs for the companies applying?

“The only costs are opportunity costs”. “It might make your life cheaper because you’re not spending on leisure activities”. They’re paying you, so the cost is negative.

How do the accelerators find PR? Is it a hard sell?

YCombinator has press calling them up all the time. How important is local press? “Is there such a thing?” - press can be a negative ROI for start-ups - starts competitors. “Being in TechCrunch isn’t going to get you users, but investors are going to read it.”

How important is location? Silicon Valley vs. Boston vs. etc?

It can be done anywhere but you need every advantage you can get - so Silicon Valley can be a great place to be. You get a real, tangible benefit to being in SV. But there are advantages to not being in SV (and applause from the crowd) - it’s very expensive, it’s easier to stick out, and it depends on your skill-sets. Every community has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Boston investors were more slow moving than Silicon Valley investors.

What are the commonalities

They all want to make it easy for entrepreneurs.

Questions

Are they looking for quick-sells?: No - they love it if you’re the next Larry and Sergei. They don’t want service-based businesses, but businesses that scale are valuable. They won’t force you to sell.

Have you ever funded anyone over 40?: Yes.

What do they think of entrepreneur residence programs?: Investors are doing more deals - they’re looking to spend money without sitting on boards.

These aren’t all of the questions… some of them ramble. Hmm. Check out the conversation on Twitter!

A lot of people are all talk about designing (“Do more! Be more!”)… but no one talks about how they do it. No one shows their work (because it’s proprietary). Have you ever seen a wireframe from Jared Spool? JJG? Peter Morville?

Wireframe vs. Prototype: Argued that sketching is a kind of wireframe. Choose a side. (Audience member: “I think an interactive wireframe is the way to go…” “Copout!”)

What’s the best tool? Omnigraffle? Balsamiq? Powerpoint?

If you’re still arguing, you’re missing the point. Use whatever you can to illustrate your point (interactive or not) and to communicate effectively.

4 designers, 1 problem

No one could talk to each other to keep everyone honest while working on the presentation. Everyone uses a different tool (Omnigraffle, HTML, Fireworks, and Balsamiq). Four different designers can tackle the same problem using different tools and be successful.

They looked for a non-profit: lend4health.com and Tori Tuncan instead of a theoretical client. Decided to give her a proper site rather than her current 1-pager.

Balsamic

Use FRIENDOFRUSS to get 50% off of Balsamiq.

Created two personas - people you need a loan and people who give a loan. Created a sitemap (using postit notes and cards on a push-pin board). Card-sorting. Then went into Balsamiq, but can’t use it for sitemaps, for used a random UML tool. Userpaths: How one persona goes through paths on the website - which was sketched first. Don’t worry about being a horrible sketcher - just as long as they communicate. Helps figure out the right approach - but as soon as you start using a tool (like Balsamiq), things will be discovered and changed.

And they showed a cool video… hopefully I can find and embed. =/

HTML

By @zakiwarfel. Always begins with research. Watch people use the existing site remotely - talk to people - etc.

Explore concepts through sketching. Not wireframes. Sketching first. But don’t spend too much time sketching since it’s just trying to get an idea out there to critique. Like the quick-fire challenge in Top Chef.

Move into prototypes - straight into HTML (/CSS/Javascript).

Another movie time…

Conclusion

This talk had a lot of great movies to show their process that I can’t find just yet. Hopefully they’ll exist on the internet soon and I can embed them. :) Essentially: don’t go straight into design, work with personas, sitemaps, etc to map out the process (and I wish they went into HOW to do this). Your wireframes/prototypes don’t have to be constrained to one format — there are a number of formats that work.