Launching early

If you're not embarrased by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

The past few weeks have been dedicated to growth. More specifically, I have been reaching out to designers to increase traffic and awareness of the site. At first, it was quite nerve-racking introducing myself to strangers and asking them to write a post, especially when I had no credibility and didn't think the site was ready to go live.

Then I always remind myself of what Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, would say,

If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

Below is what the site looked like when it went live. I focused on building a few views just to be able to see if designers would want to collaborate.

Design is subjective, but as I'm a professional designer I always set the bar high for myself and aim for nothing less. You might think that the first version of my site was pretty good, but to me, it was embarrassing to go live with, let alone reach out and ask other designers to check out the site and be part of it.

Putting myself out there

Every week I would reach out to a handful of designers via LinkedIn and explain to them what I was trying to achieve and ask if they would collaborate.

Many didn't reply. A few "thanks, but no thanks". Then there were a few that would be intrigued, even thankful for being asked to be part of such a project.

That's when I realised I had something. Designers were willing to collaborate despite the site not being to the standard that I thought it needed to be.

This made me realise how important it is to test your ideas early. Especially when you're embarrassed with how your site looks. If I had waited to build the full site and no one wanted to be a part of it, I would have wasted so much time and energy.

Looking at the data

I've been refining my processes and have been noticing more and more designers agreeing to be part of the site. Which is amazing! However, with the increased traffic, I've noticed that the retention rate isn't as high as I had wanted.

It was time to put on my developer hat again and start building the rest of the site. I noticed most of my traffic came via readers using their phones so I knew I had to optimise it for the mobile.

The "visit duration" had dipped a little. Which was a signal that there's not enough content on the site, I'm not pushing users to other content enough, or something else. Regardless, I needed to work on the navigation, add additional views and optimise the landing page to hopefully boost my numbers.

Building out the site

It was time to start building out the site to the level that I had wanted. I had enough data to prove that. Below are a few screenshots of what the site looks like today.

Something that I'm less embarrassed to show to designers. Don't forget I have high standards!

Constantly iterating

Everything is an assumption, but by looking at the data and having tight feedback loops I'm able to experiment and see if any of the updates help boost the numbers. As long as I'm constantly doing this, I'm positive that I'll build a site that provides value.

However, I can't forget to take off my developer hat, put on my sales hat, and make a few cold calls every now and then.