I don't know what a full-time business person is supposed to do at a webapp which teaches Chinese. What were you anticipating?
Here's my suggestion: forget "traditional" marketing. You're now Head of SEO. Don't worry if you're totally incompetent at it, most professional SEOs are, too. Set yourself a goal for the end of this year: I am going to learn SEO, and I am going to quintuple the traffic Skritter receives from Google, and I am going to lift our front page to trial conversion by 25%.
Then, that is your full time job. Trust me, you will be able to continually generate value for the business.
(I originally typed "fill the time", then I smacked myself. Filling the time is a self-destructive, useless way to look at working. Don't feel productive, be productive, and then go home. And tell your coders that, too.)
P.S. Let me get you started on lifting the front page conversion -- that huge, ginormous, eye-catching animated thing on your front page? That is getting clicked, I can guarantee it. It is probably being clicked more than every other element on that page put together.
Install CrazyEgg if you don't believe me.
That should be linked to whichever of sign up and try now generates more business value.
"I don't know what a full-time business person is supposed to do at a webapp which teaches Chinese. What were you anticipating?"
Nicely put, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure. I guess I had these visions of high-powered business meetings, a lot of funding pitches/presentations, demo days, conferences, print advertising, and employees. All that stuff still could happen, but it's going to be a while, and we're intentionally keeping things as small as possible for as long as possible to minimize overhead and managerial headaches.
Good idea on the front page too. We're actually A/B testing it right now. The current design is about 8 months old and we realized about 2 months ago that it was probably sucking hard.
I've never heard of CrazyEgg, but I actually just signed up for a $9/mo demo account.
Comments
I don't know what a full-time business person is supposed to do at a webapp which teaches Chinese. What were you anticipating?
Here's my suggestion: forget "traditional" marketing. You're now Head of SEO. Don't worry if you're totally incompetent at it, most professional SEOs are, too. Set yourself a goal for the end of this year: I am going to learn SEO, and I am going to quintuple the traffic Skritter receives from Google, and I am going to lift our front page to trial conversion by 25%.
Then, that is your full time job. Trust me, you will be able to continually generate value for the business.
(I originally typed "fill the time", then I smacked myself. Filling the time is a self-destructive, useless way to look at working. Don't feel productive, be productive, and then go home. And tell your coders that, too.)
P.S. Let me get you started on lifting the front page conversion -- that huge, ginormous, eye-catching animated thing on your front page? That is getting clicked, I can guarantee it. It is probably being clicked more than every other element on that page put together.
Install CrazyEgg if you don't believe me.
That should be linked to whichever of sign up and try now generates more business value.
"I don't know what a full-time business person is supposed to do at a webapp which teaches Chinese. What were you anticipating?"
Nicely put, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure. I guess I had these visions of high-powered business meetings, a lot of funding pitches/presentations, demo days, conferences, print advertising, and employees. All that stuff still could happen, but it's going to be a while, and we're intentionally keeping things as small as possible for as long as possible to minimize overhead and managerial headaches.
Good idea on the front page too. We're actually A/B testing it right now. The current design is about 8 months old and we realized about 2 months ago that it was probably sucking hard.
I've never heard of CrazyEgg, but I actually just signed up for a $9/mo demo account.