Weekly Snip Report, October 29th, 2014

This somehow never occurred to me to do before but I finally started tracking what I call “inbound communication” in a spreadsheet. So far inbound communication includes Olark and my 800 number. In the 12 days I’ve been tracking this stuff (10/17 to 10/29) I’ve gotten 12 pieces of inbound communication. Six of those were bullshit – not actual prospects. Of the other six, three were good, solid leads. (All three started trials.One gave me her credit card info.) Of those who were genuine prospects but not good leads, two wanted features I didn’t have (POS system and a “walk-in” feature, whatever that means) and one just kind of peaced out on the conversation without coming to any kind of conclusion or giving any identifying information.

Last week I said I wanted to funnel all my funnels into my 800 number rather than web forms. I’ve changed my mind yet again but only slightly! I think I want to simply add the 800 number as an option, since I’m frankly kind of scared of the idea of only having the 800 number as an option, especially since that would be so hard to track.

I’m becoming increasingly certain that focusing on traffic is no longer premature. Twelve pieces of inbound communication in 12 days is of course an average of 1 per day. I think I could reasonably expect that if I 10Xed my traffic, I’d be getting 10 pieces of inbound communication per day, which would make my head explode in the best possible way. And if three twelfths of my prospects are good leads, or 25%, then that would mean 2-3 good leads a day. Even with my same shitty website.

But I guess my shitty website brings up a point: it probably only makes sense to focus on “free” traffic right now. It would be stupid to buy a $2500 magazine ad or something when I still have a shitty website; that money would be better spent on a better website. So I guess my plan is to focus on free traffic while continuing to save up enough to have the website professionally redesigned.

I frankly can’t believe how “well” the site is doing in its current state. There’s more activity now than there’s ever been. Interested to see what my inbound communication log looks like after a full month of recording.

2 thoughts on “Weekly Snip Report, October 29th, 2014

  1. Kevin Taylor

    Hi Jason,
    Couldn’t you just hire a web designer to re-design say just your homepage? surely you could find a designer on odesk (or similar) who would do this for a few hundred dollars or less. If this is successful, then you could have the whole site re-designed.

    Reply
    1. Jason Post author

      Hey Kevin, yeah, it might be a good idea to just redesign the homepage first. I do already have a designer who I’ve worked with for Snip’s branding and business cards, so I feel like it probably makes sense to continue working with her as opposed to using an ODesk person. My fear with ODesk is that I’ll get some flake whose work I’m not happy with and then I’ll end up having to pay for that PLUS paying the designer I already know and trust to go back and do it right. I asked my designer for a rough quote at one point and she said it would probably be about a thousand bucks worth of work, so I’m not doing anything crazy. Maybe I can even whittle down the scope of that to 500 bucks or something.

      Reply

Leave a Reply to Jason Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *