As developers we get excited for new technology and the news out of Apple a good example. As Apple was holding its Worldwide Developers Conference, we had the keynote streaming in our conference room. Since much of our design and development happens on Mac computers we are always looking to see what new technology is coming out. As we were working away, we could hear the Apple executives talking about what was new. Toward the end of the presentation Senior VP Craig Federighi said that "Objective-C has served us well for 20 years, But...â. But? What? Without even a word, our whole office was in the conference to see what came next.
Apple introduced Swift a new language that is simpler than Objective-C but as powerful or even more powerful. The best part of our job is that we get to learn new technologies all the time. Swift is the newest example of that. As the language gets better and better over the next few years, we expect more and more developers to use it. There are still other great options for developers building phone apps including Phonegap, RubyMotion, and more. When you are building an application, its important to look at all the options and make an educated decision as to the one that will best help your business grow. Apple is betting that the simpler Swift will help drive even more developers to build apps for their platform. As developers, we think its a good bet and canât wait to see where it goes.
Apple's New Programming Languageapple-s-new-programming-languaget2014-06-03 19:33:33.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.691000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/swift.jpgAs developers we get excited for new technology and the news out of Apple a good example. As Apple was holding its Worldwide Developers Conference, we had the keynote streaming in our conference room. Since much of our design and development happens on Mac computers we are always looking to see what new technology is coming out. As we were working away, we could hear the Apple executives talking about what was new. Toward the end of the presentation Senior VP Craig Federighi said that "Objective-C has served us well for 20 years, But...â. But? What? Without even a word, our whole office was in the conference to see what came next.
Apple introduced Swift a new language that is simpler than Objective-C but as powerful or even more powerful. The best part of our job is that we get to learn new technologies all the time. Swift is the newest example of that. As the language gets better and better over the next few years, we expect more and more developers to use it. There are still other great options for developers building phone apps including Phonegap, RubyMotion, and more. When you are building an application, its important to look at all the options and make an educated decision as to the one that will best help your business grow. Apple is betting that the simpler Swift will help drive even more developers to build apps for their platform. As developers, we think its a good bet and canât wait to see where it goes.
swift.jpgimage/jpeg22015-06-30 18:56:05.7587252014-06-03 19:33:33.000000À| úu }AA a? A AwebWe try all of the latest tools and apps that can help startups get users and build traction. Hereâs our list of the top tools we recommend to the startups we work with.
is an app that makes it easy to communicate with your customers. Have you ever gotten emails a few days after you signed up for a site? Thatâs what Intercom does. It stores all of your customer information (name, email, when they signed up, etc.) and letâs you set up custom rules to contact segments of customers by email. It also allows you to post messages directly in your app and chat with users when theyâre logged in.
Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think that all they need to do is get people to sign up for their app. However, Getting people to sign up is only the beginning of your funnel. To build a successful startup, you need to make sure that your users become active users and that you retain them for a long time. If youâre building any type of SaaS app, Intercom is a must-have.
Intercom is so good that Iâm not going to even mention alternatives. Just go and sign up now: https://www.intercom.io/.
Bonus: Also be sure to check out Intercomâs awesome blog.
Heap is an analytics platform that allows you to easily track analytics by user or by segments of users. Heapâs killer feature is that its analytics are retroactive, meaning you can install it today, and it will start to automatically start to define and track events for you without any setup. No matter how much you plan out your metrics beforehand, there will always be events that you decide are important later. Heap has you covered for those instances. With most other analytics tools you would need to define any events you want to track upfront.
Most sites will already have Google Analytics installed. Google Analytics is great, but requires much more setup - especially if you want to segment out groups of users. Segmented analytics are key for growing startups because they give you better visibility on your users and let you hone in on whatâs working and what needs to be fixed. Heap allows you to harness this segmented analysis much quicker.
There are plenty of good analytics alternatives. Mixpanel and Kissmetrics both provide excellent segmented analytics. However, as discussed above, you will have to pre-define the events you want to track. If you have a simple site, Clicky is a great tool to see your most important metrics.
Pipedrive is a CRM that gives you a clear overview of your sales pipeline. Pipedrive has a simple interface where each lead is a card. You just drag and drop the cards to move them through the Pipeline (similar to Trello). Pipedrive gives your team a powerful reminder system so youâll never forget about a lead.
Our dream when building a Saas app is that customers will automatically sign up without much sales effort. Unfortunately, this doesnât work in practice. To have a chance to get users and survive you will have to make sales a priority. After trying every CRM, Pipedrive is the easiest way Iâve found to quickly focus your teamâs attention on sales.
There are countless CRM alternatives. If youâre looking for something more lightweight, Streak is a CRM that sits right in your Gmail account. Highrise is another solid option that allows you to send emails right from the app. For larger sales teams, Salesforce is the giant player in this space.
Mailchimp and Mandrill are email services. With Mailchimp you can send email updates and newsletters to your subscribers. Mandrill (owned by Mailchimp) is a service you use inside of your application to send emails. Both tools give you incredible control over your companyâs email campaigns.
Email should be a central piece of your startup strategy. Itâs always a good idea to build your email list early (before launch) so you have a group of fans ready to sign up and buy your product. Email becomes even more important after you launch to keep your customers engaged. Mailchimp and Mandrill (plus Intercom, above) will help you build a rock-solid email strategy for your startup.
The Mailchimp/Mandrill combo is hard to beat for startups. If youâre looking for an alternative for email newsletters, Campaign Monitor and Mad Mimi are good choices. For in app emails, SendGrid, Mailgun and Postmark are all solid alternatives to Mandrill.
Buffer is a tool that allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Plus all at once. It adds your post to a queue and lets you set the frequency and time that your posts will go out on each platform. It also gives you analytics for all of your social media posts and letâs you invite other members of your team to post.
Youâve probably already set up your Twitter and Facebook accounts for your startup. Unfortunately, most startups quickly forget about social media. Buffer will make it easy for you to keep your social media feeds fresh and start to build an engaged audience.
SproutSocial and Hootsuite are both great platforms that allow you to post to multiple social media channels and provide solid analytics.
Did we miss an app or service that you love? Let us know about it on Twitter @LaunchPadLab.
Top Tools and Apps for SaaS Startups - CRM, Email, & Analyticstop-tools-and-apps-for-saas-startups-crm-email-analyticst2015-06-16 19:25:54.5020002015-06-16 19:41:40.390000We try all of the latest tools and apps that can help startups get users and build traction. Hereâs our list of the top tools we recommend to the startups we work with.intercom-app-messager.pngimage/pngk@2015-06-30 18:56:04.6786682015-06-16 19:25:54.502000 introduced, combining the monitor/keyboard/mouse into a single package. In the latest generation, devices have a single interface: the touch screen. Each new generation of technology, built upon the adoption of its predecessors, raises user expectations for the most elegant of human/device interfaces.User interaction with web applications has followed the same pattern over the last 20+ years.
Consumers were first widely introduced to the internet through a web browser (ex. Netscape) and HTTP requests. To access a web site, a user navigates to a URL. Once on the site, the user interacts by clicking on hyperlinks. Users established fundamental expectations of:
While not ideal, users learned how to use websites effectively against these constraints. Fundamentally, to obtain new content, a browser needed to refresh.
The user pattern of the browser refresh, while functional, is not ideal for two key reasons:
To solve some of these technical problems, AJAX and its various implementations (PJAX, Turbolinks) were used by developers. Server requests could be made asynchronously, allowing for content to be delivered to the user without a full page refresh. Users now expected:
A definite improvement, but still not ideal for persisting data between simultaneous users and syncing web views with the data.
With the advent of powerful client-side frameworks (AngularJS, Ember, ReactJS, Meteor), a whole new frontier is here for consumers of web applications.
Gone are the days of click .... and wait. Servers and databases now push updates to user's screen in real-time. While this behavior has been second nature to users on desktop and native applications, only now is it truly here on the web. These new tools allow us as developers to build applications that are:
These characteristics have made native apps and games so popular for years. You now see this same speed and interactivity in modern web applications. We at LaunchPad, as developers and builders of these applications, are excited to be part of this powerful trend.
User expectations for speed and interactivity on the web are only increasing. Just as users now expect to have touch capability on all their devices, so to do users expect web application to be real-time.
The modern web is here to stay. We're proud to push user expectations higher using the latest innovative web technologies.
The Modern Webthe-modern-webt2015-05-16 14:49:00.6300002015-06-05 20:39:35.713000User interaction with web applications has transformed over the last 20+ years. At one point in time, static sites defined the web. Now, users expect highly interactive and real-time experiences to maximize their workflows and needs.mongodb-intro-opt.jpgimage/jpeg:â2015-06-30 18:56:06.7012752015-05-16 14:49:00.630000 sMMAAy !A AbusinessAs developers we get excited for new technology and the news out of Apple a good example. As Apple was holding its Worldwide Developers Conference, we had the keynote streaming in our conference room. Since much of our design and development happens on Mac computers we are always looking to see what new technology is coming out. As we were working away, we could hear the Apple executives talking about what was new. Toward the end of the presentation Senior VP Craig Federighi said that "Objective-C has served us well for 20 years, But...â. But? What? Without even a word, our whole office was in the conference to see what came next.
Apple introduced Swift a new language that is simpler than Objective-C but as powerful or even more powerful. The best part of our job is that we get to learn new technologies all the time. Swift is the newest example of that. As the language gets better and better over the next few years, we expect more and more developers to use it. There are still other great options for developers building phone apps including Phonegap, RubyMotion, and more. When you are building an application, its important to look at all the options and make an educated decision as to the one that will best help your business grow. Apple is betting that the simpler Swift will help drive even more developers to build apps for their platform. As developers, we think its a good bet and canât wait to see where it goes.
Apple's New Programming Languageapple-s-new-programming-languaget2014-06-03 19:33:33.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.691000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/swift.jpgAs developers we get excited for new technology and the news out of Apple a good example. As Apple was holding its Worldwide Developers Conference, we had the keynote streaming in our conference room. Since much of our design and development happens on Mac computers we are always looking to see what new technology is coming out. As we were working away, we could hear the Apple executives talking about what was new. Toward the end of the presentation Senior VP Craig Federighi said that "Objective-C has served us well for 20 years, But...â. But? What? Without even a word, our whole office was in the conference to see what came next.
Apple introduced Swift a new language that is simpler than Objective-C but as powerful or even more powerful. The best part of our job is that we get to learn new technologies all the time. Swift is the newest example of that. As the language gets better and better over the next few years, we expect more and more developers to use it. There are still other great options for developers building phone apps including Phonegap, RubyMotion, and more. When you are building an application, its important to look at all the options and make an educated decision as to the one that will best help your business grow. Apple is betting that the simpler Swift will help drive even more developers to build apps for their platform. As developers, we think its a good bet and canât wait to see where it goes.
swift.jpgimage/jpeg22015-06-30 18:56:05.7587252014-06-03 19:33:33.000000À| úu }AA a? A AwebWe try all of the latest tools and apps that can help startups get users and build traction. Hereâs our list of the top tools we recommend to the startups we work with.
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sC!A Aweb The simplicity requires an element of risk, of elegance and complexity. People tend to think that if an answer is simple, that it was easy to figure out. Logos are the face of your company. Itâs important to have a logo that gives off the feeling you want your customers to remember you by. With design trends constantly evolving, itâs important for companies to make sure their logo doesnât look outdated because they wouldnât want their consumers to think that their product or service is outdated. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have each been around since the mid 1970s, and have each redesigned their logos 5 times. Google has o Š% Æ))AA
_7!A Aweb Innovation adoption follows a curve, characterized by how quickly people embrace new technology. Every new piece of technology requires a period of learning by its users. A baseline of understanding must be established before that technology's true societal impact can be felt. When people were first introduced to the personal computer, using a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to interact with a computer was revolutionary. People first had to learn how they could tell a computer what to do and then how they could see those results displayed on a screen. With a new baseline for user behavior, the laptop computer was nly been around since 1998 and has also undergone 5 logo redesigns. Clearly, these companies understand the need to stay ahead of their competitors by maintaining a modern and innovative look to appeal to their consumers. Francis Lofts & Bunks came to us wanting a complete rebrandingâthey wanted a new logo, website, and print materials. As a company that sells custom, modern looking bunk and loft beds, they wanted their logo and website to reflect that premium product. Here are six key steps in our process that we typically follow when designing a new logo: During our kick-off meeting, we sat down with one of the co-founders of Francis Lofts & Bunks, Ryan, to get a better grasp of his company and what message he hoped the new branding would reflect. Some questions we asked: We also did a quick word association exercise, where together we created a list of words that best describe the company and itsâ products. Our list consisted of 25 adjectives which included: contemporary, modern, high-end, stable, and functional. This list is extremely helpful to keep in mind when designing because it establishes the feeling we want consumers to have when seeing the new logo. We tried gathering as much information as we could during this step because it will help us understand what our client is looking for and hopefully get a feeling for their aesthetic taste/style. This eliminates a lot of the guesswork which ultimately helps lead to the best design faster. Before starting any initial sketches, I made sure to do some research into the industry. When researching for this particular logo, it not only helped me gain a better understanding of the furniture industry as a whole, but also gave me ideas of what to avoid. As with any logo, itâs important to stand out and be memorableâso seeing a bunch of examples of whatâs already been done was certainly helpful. You wouldnât want to spend hours designing a logo only to find out later that itâs been done before. Similar to the word association exercise, I went through all the reviews on the current Francis Lofts & Bunks site and picked out all the adjectives that their customers used to describe the beds. Sturdy, modern, space saver, and sleek were among the most popular adjectives; I knew that it would be important to make sure that the new logo reflected those emotions. This is where I get out that pencil and paper to start quickly sketching out some initial ideas and potential directions for the logo. Then I open up Illustrator and start turning those sketches into vectors. As tempting as it is to start playing around with color, I always force myself to work in black and white. Color can be distracting and can leave a lasting impression on a client. This means that if they donât like the color, they might dislike the whole logo as a result (no matter how good the logo really is). During this process, printing out the logo at various sizes is important. A logo could look great during a presentation on a large screen, but we also need to consider legibility at smaller sizes as well (i.e. in the na vigation bar of a website or printed small on business cards). I went through all the logo variations and picked out my five favorites. Itâs good to show anywhere between three to five different logos. And by âdifferentâ I donât just mean using a different font, but three to five very distinct directions. However, showing too many options can become overwhelming, not to mention the risk of having one logo that youâre not too fond of getting chosen. I refined those 5 logos by making sure all the lines were clean and alignment was tight as well as making adjustments to the spacing and kerning of the text. Presentation really is key. Putting together a couple nice clean slides really helps give the logos a more polished and finished look. It's also helpful for the client to hear the vision behind each logo. So from left to right, here's my rationale behind the design for each of these logos: 1. The square and opening are supposed to suggest a blueprinted room. And the text placed inside the room has plenty of padding around each letter to give off the impression of efficient use of limited space. 2. The second one takes an abstracted monogram approach, where I used a square again to represent a room and within that space created the letters F and L out of smaller squares. The positive and negative space relates to how Francis Lofts and Bunks help customers save space and how seamlessly their beds can fit within their homes. 3. The central logo uses typography and positioning of the text to reflect the products they sellâso the stacking of "lofts" over "bunks" suggests the form of the beds. 4. The next logo also takes an abstract approach, showing a silhouette of a bunk bed. The logo's boldness is used to evoke a sense of stability and inform customers of the sturdiness and safety of these beds. 5. This last one was definitely my personal favorite. The hexagonal shape represents a three dimensional space and I included both a three dimensional loft and bunk bed to fit inside the room. This was the only logo that clearly represented the two primary products that make up their company. Luckily for me (and for Francis Lofts & Bunks), this was the chosen logo! With every logo itâs important to provide clients with a complete folder that includes both horizontal and vertical logos exporting it in various file types and sizes. It's helpful to have these on hand when creating promotional products or sponsoring events where someone would require a high quality copy of a logo. In addition to the new logo, we designed custom icons to compliment the logo to add cohesion throughout. Be sure to check out the new Francis Lofts & Bunks site where we used the new branding as the foundation to redesign the rest of their website. 
Understanding the Company
Research
Sketching & Conceptualization
Refinement
Presentation
Delivery
Smile, get plenty of sleep, and go outside for a walk. Youâd be surprised what a simple 20 minute walk outside can do for creativity and productivity.
Styleguides are not only for designers; they provide design guidelines, ui/pattern library, and front-end development code which can act as a good reference for anyone on your team.
It is important to maintain consistent styleguides which keep the documentation current and useful. For projects large and small, component-based styleguides really help developers rapidly prototype with accurate styles.
Donât throw typography rules out the window just because youâre typesetting on the web.
Too often typography is not given the care it deserves on the web because designers/developers are under the impression that it requires complicated âcss hacksâ; in fact, there are fairly simple solutions to styles like drop caps, hanging quotes, orphans, and lead-ins. So thereâs no excuse for lazy typesetting! Also, paragraph indents do have a place on the web, and itâs for content that is intended to be read all the way through, whereas spaces between paragraphs should be used for content that can be skimmed.
Making mistakes or failing can help you identify problems, learn important lessons, and make you aware of your flaws so that you can avoid or correct them in the future.
When it comes to using Github, version control can really help us feel more at ease about making mistakes. At LaunchPad Lab, we typically make pull requests once a branch is ready to be reviewed and merged in. However, employees over at Github make PRs after the first commit and team members review the code and design more often. They have team discussions and critiques over a branch right in Github which keeps conversations more organized.
âWe need to be nimble, provide frequent feedback to our stockholders, and adapt quickly to changing priorities.â
This idea of Agile Development takes time and practice to achieve. The process typically includes steps similar to the following: establishing product requirements, forecasting features, sprint planning meetings (setting goals and estimating potential issues), determining capacity and velocity of your team, executing sprint tasks, regular stand-ups, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives. It takes a certain level of diligence to effectively implement Agile Development, but the rewards of adaptability are great.
âActing honorably, when the world around you does not, is the best advice for aspiring business owners.â
We donât live in a perfect world, so when things go wrong itâs important to adapt and find positive alternatives. Also, remember to do your research when naming a businessâitâs important to search for both domain and trademark availability. You wouldnât want to spend thousands of dollars on branding only to find out that you have to change your name.
Overall, the conference was a great experienceâwe learned a lot, met new people, got plenty of swag, played giant Jenga at the after party, and, most importantly, got to eat plenty of delicious Texas BBQ.
Shortly after we started LaunchPad Lab, we lost a check from a client. From that point on, we started exploring all sorts of ways to accept payments for our business, looking for something better. Weâve accepted money via Credit Cards, PayPal, QuickPay, Billpay, Dwolla, by wire, and every other possible method of payment.
Each one had their pros and cons, but none of them were the answer.
Last week as part of the design team, Kurt and I flew down to Grapevine, Texas for the first annual Squares Conference. There was a solid mix of topics discussed which included: design, ux, frontend, development, business, and products.
Each speaker shared their experiences as designers and developers, including some lessons that they had learned throughout their work. Here are a few of their thoughts that stuck with me the most:
âDesign is for everyone.â
Design should be considered throughout the entire process of building an application or site, not just in the initial phase. Sometimes after building out a design, you may find that the user experience is not flowing how you expected, and you'll need to rework your original ideas. It's best to catch these issues as early as possible; having designers that can do front end development definitely speeds up this process, since we can make changes on the fly.
âExperimentation is the best way to learn.â
âIf a webpage takes more than how 2 seconds to load, 40% of users will leave the siteâthis can cost companies large amounts of money.â
Website and application performance shouldnât be an afterthought; itâs crucial to start thinking about it at the beginning of a project. Some key metrics to keep track of are page weight (kb/mb), start render time, and time until fully loaded. Setting a âperformance budgetâ on things like css files, fonts, and images can help ensure better performance and thus more traffic to your site.
Itâs important to know what your company stands for.
For instance, here are some of the axioms our speaker Kyle Kutter's company (LifeChurch.tv) follows: mission first, why before the what, itâs all about the people, latest doesnât mean greatest, data has a seat at the table, move fast and follow momentum, innovation happens where passion meets constraints, and simpler is better.
By developing a unique set of beliefs, you help create a company identity and point of view. Knowing what you stand for can help you through difficult decisions and builds concrete reasoning behind the many choices you'll have to make as a company.
Never stop designing and building, no matter how many times you fail.
The little wins on the side help keep you excited and passionate. Itâs important not to build too much at onceâset a reasonable scope, build it, and launch it. There is no reason to build features on top of features without even knowing if users will like your product in its most rudimentary form. Launching with too many features can also overwh
After testing out all of the existing payment options, we knew what we were looking for - and since it didnât exist yet, we decided to build it ourselves. We leveraged our backgrounds in banking and finance, and ultimately set out to build something that would help our business run more efficiently. We thought of it as a âvalet serviceâ for collecting money from our customers, so we aptly named it PayValet.
We initially built this for ourselves, but when many of our friends and clients asked us about it, we decided to let others use it too.
During our private beta, we were lucky to have customers raving about PayValet. Weâve had a wide range of people using it - big names like the Chicago Bulls, marketing firms like 1st Labs, and freelancers like Liz Sarb. The results have been outstanding. Some of our clients are reporting their accounts receivable decreasing by over 70% because of PayValet! That alone makes it worth all the work we put into it.
So after a year of private beta, itâs time to unleash this to all of you.
Welcome to PayValet. We hope it helps your business as much as it has helped ours.
Here are a few reasons you should make time for refactoring as you go. Donât think of it as something extra you need to sell your clients on. Own it as part of your development process.
The longer you go without refactoring something you're meaning to, the larger and more daunting the refactoring process gets. As the codebase grows, the feature that needs refactoring will be touching more parts of the application, adding to the number of things that will break once you finally decide to refactor. Often, the code will get too cluttered for you to realistically have the time to go back and untangle the mess you previously left behind. By putting off refactoring, you'll continue to inherit more and more 'technical debt.' As it piles up, it becomes less likely that you'll have the time to repay it.
It's like going to the dentist: if you skip your cleanings, you're more likely to have cavities when you finally do decide to go.
In an agile development process, changes are constantly being made to an application. Cluttered, non-DRY code is not at all conducive to frequent iterations. If you leave messy code behind in an effort to get something shipped faster, the changes after that will be slower, more frustrating and prone to errors. This makes the app and those working on it more resistant to change, further slowing down future versions of the product. Going back to the dentist analogy, no one looks forward to going in for a checkup knowing that the dentist might discover some cavities.
If you want the code to evolve with the design of the app, refactoring as you go gives you a leg up; making you ready to take on changes as they become necessary.
Often the code that needs to be refactored is code that is unclear, not object-oriented, and less transferrable to other developers. At least for us here at LaunchPad, it's rare to only have one set of eyes on the code, so clarity is essential. If you're not refactoring to keep the code clear in its purpose, you're going to make it much more difficult for the dev next to you to do their job.
A couple of my teammates and I made what we thought are some good telltale signs for knowing when it's worth taking the time to make things right.
You should refactor...
Obviously, a lot of things could be added to this list, but it's a good general guideline.
By continuously refactoring, your code will stay clear, object-oriented, and rooted in reality. This makes your code more open to change, keeping it 'healthy' (less bugs, passing tests), keeping your teammates happy, and saving you time in the long run. By putting in the time to refactor, you're ultimately providing a better and more sustainable process to your clients.
Owning Continuous Refactoring As Part of Your Process owning-continuous-refactoring-as-part-of-your-processt2015-03-20 20:00:40.8240002015-06-05 20:39:35.756000Learn how and when to refactor, and our take on owning the refactoring process as part of your service. refactoring.jpgimage/jpeg Ù 2015-06-30 18:56:11.2458242015-03-20 20:00:40.824000 {èł k //AA How we use Herokuhow-we-use-herokuf2015-05-04 22:56:32.6630002015-06-05 20:38:01.382000) OAAAA e AwebHere is a look at a stripped down version of Rails optimized for API work.
Enjoy!
Rails configured as an APIrails-configured-as-an-apit2012-11-30 21:55:50.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.795000Here is a look at a stripped down version of Rails optimized for API work. http://bit.ly/TxQTAX Enjoy!2012-11-30 21:55:50.0000002 +--AA 9 AbusinessWhile that title is funny (hopefully), this advice from Ari Emanuel provides some good insight on being successful. All 6 ideas are helpful to start ups and those shaking things up.
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121002115428-204263538-the-six-lessons-i-live-by
Let's Hug it Outlet-s-hug-it-outt2013-01-03 15:57:22.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.782000While that title is funny (hopefully), this advice from Ari Emanuel provides some good insight on being successful. All 6 ideas are helpful to start ups and those shaking things up. http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121002115428-204263538-the-six-lessons-i-live-by2013-01-03 15:57:22.000000 WQQAA AwebHere's a tip from a fellow development shop in Chicago. How to see failures closer to the source....good stuff
http://blog.8thlight.com/brian-pratt/2012/12/21/dont-fail-at-failure.html
Making code easier to troubleshootmaking-code-easier-to-troubleshoott2012-12-30 18:29:25.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.776000Here's a tip from a fellow development shop in Chicago. How to see failures closer to the source....good stuff http://blog.8thlight.com/brian-pratt/2012/12/21/dont-fail-at-failure.html 2012-12-30 18:29:25.000000 9[YAA AbusinessSometimes it feels obvious, but this article puts in plain English a lot of the frustrations early entrepreneurs have. Now time to solve them!
http://blog.intercom.io/overcoming-customer-inertia/
The Switch: Overcoming Customer Inertiathe-switch-overcoming-customer-inertiat2012-12-19 15:47:06.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.767000Sometimes it feels obvious, but this article puts in plain English a lot of the frustrations early entrepreneurs have. Now time to solve them! http://blog.intercom.io/overcoming-customer-inertia/2012-12-19 15:47:06.000000y kiAA q AbusinessThe mistake is to have only one price for your product.
http://thinktraffic.net/most-common-pricing-mistake
Are You Making the Most Common Pricing Mistake?are-you-making-the-most-common-pricing-mistaket2012-12-17 03:13:52.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.762000The mistake is to have only one price for your product. http://thinktraffic.net/most-common-pricing-mistake 2012-12-17 03:13:52.000000ąy ÀywAA ]+!A AbackendIt's safe to say that we, as developers, find refactoring to not only be a crucial part of our process, but one of the main ways we learn and improve in our everyday work.
However, supporting continuous refactoring in a consultancy, where clients and deadlines are a part of our livelihood, can be tough to manage because:
Happy Thanksgiving from LPL!
Here's some light reading on some great insight from entrepreneurs who have been through the gauntlet.
http://davidhauser.com/post/35203066523/advice-from-21-entrepreneurs
Holiday reading materialholiday-reading-materialt2012-11-21 21:30:27.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.790000Happy Thanksgiving from LPL! Here's some light reading on some great insight from entrepreneurs who have been through the gauntlet. http://davidhauser.com/post/35203066523/advice-from-21-entrepreneurs2012-11-21 21:30:27.000000Ź Ò}MMAA )!A AIf you're a busy person, youâre probably spending more and more of your time in Gmail. When Gmail first came out most of us were only getting a few emails a day. Now we're bombarded with them all day long. And itâs only getting worse.
Gmail isnât designed to handle hundreds of emails a day very well. In fact, no email client is. However, Gmail offers some awesome features to help manage your overflowing inbox.
The problem is that Gmail sorts emails chronologically by default. This means that every email you get is treated the same. The important email from your boss looks the same - and disrupts you the same way - as the latest Groupon ad. And since you don't know who the next email will be from, or how important it will be, you're constantly checking your inbox all day long.
The key to taking control of your inbox is to take advantage of Gmailâs built-in Importance Markers and Priority Inbox. These tools allow you to get away from constantly checking your inbox. Theyâve been around for a while, but very few people set Gmail up to use them.
Go to your Gmail settings (gear icon) and click on “Inbox”.
For Inbox type select “Priority Inbox”. This will let you control the order your email is di t EOKAA k Aweb
A golden piece of advice from a successful start up: Launch Early, Launch Simple and Test!
http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2012/12/06/launch-early-launch-simple-and-test/
Wise Advice. It's time to Launch!wise-advice-it-s-time-to-launcht2012-12-14 15:47:05.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.808000A golden piece of advice from a successful start up: Launch Early, Launch Simple and Test! http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2012/12/06/launch-early-launch-simple-and-test/2012-12-14 15:47:05.000000 d 9][AA 1 AbusinessForbes has a great article on some things to focus on when looking for a developer to build your idea.
What you should look for in a Developer?what-you-should-look-for-in-a-developert2012-12-12 21:07:49.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.801000Forbes has a great article on some things to focus on when looking for a developer to build your idea. http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/12/10/4-personal-qualities-to-look-for-in-a-great-web-developer/2012-12-12 21:07:49.000000 splayed.
You will now see an Inbox Selection list. You can click on the options link to select the order of the inboxes you want to display.
As you can see, I like displaying emails marked Important and Unread first, followed by starred emails, important emails, and finally everything else. You can, of course, customize this to fit your workflow.
Next, under Importance markers select “Show markers”. This will help train Gmail on which emails are important. Gmail will keep getting better at predicting which emails are important to you. Gmail created a nice little video explaining Importance markers.
First, the best way to cut down on distracting emails is to check email less frequently. Close your Gmail browser tab, remove alerts and notifications from email, and try to check it at set times - no more than 3-5 times per day.
When I do check my email, I try to only look at my first inbox: Important and unread. This inbox is the key for me. Anything thatâs not in that list can probably be ignored for a while. When reading my Important and Unread inbox, I star any items that I need to follow up on. And if I donât star it, I make a point to either archive or delete it. I only want to read an email once, so if thereâs nothing else to do with it I want to get it out of my inbox.
The nice thing about this system is that as soon as I open an email itâs been read so itâs out of my default inbox. This makes it really easy to get to âinbox zeroâ.
The starred items act as my follow up list. I try follow up on my starred items before the end of the day so I can either respond or take action on them. As soon as Iâve taken action on the starred item, I unstar and archive it.
My next list is Important emails. These have already been read, but for some reason theyâre still in my inbox. Ideally, this is is down to zero since I do my best to either star, archive, or delete every email I read. But if this list starts to fill up, Iâm confident I can archive everything in it since Iâve already read each email and decided not to star it.
The last inbox is the dreaded Everything else list. This list mostly contains worthless emails because Iâve been using Gmailâs Importance Markers for a while to train Gmail on which emails are important. I check it occasionally just to make sure Gmail algorithm's didnât overlook anything. For example, I may have a new contact who I havenât indicated is important yet. When I check this inbox, I quickly scan to make sure I havenât overlooked anything and try to archive or delete those messages right away.
Since Iâve been using this system, I spend a lot less time reading and getting distracted by worthless emails. Itâs also much easier for me to use batch actions on these different inboxes. I can quickly archive everything in my âeverything elseâ box, for example with the confidence that I havenât missed anything important.
Give this system a try and let me know what you think.
Gmail Setup for Very Busy Peoplegmail-setup-for-very-busy-peoplet2015-05-19 03:56:34.9730002015-06-05 20:39:35.814000Learn how to use Gmailâs powerful Importance Markers and Priority Inbox to cut out distractions and keep your Inbox organized.gmail-logo.jpgimage/jpeg_J2015-06-30 18:56:12.2285442015-05-19 03:56:34.973000 nk Bed has a weight capacity of 2,000 pounds to support the weight of multiple adults.Consider the following three keyword options for Francis Lofts with their corresponding monthly searches:
$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profitable products
For the keyword "Bunk Beds", what is the largest amount of profit Francis Lofts & Bunks could obtain via Google Organic results? Best case scenario, every person that searches "Bunk Beds" on Google ends up purchasing Francis Lofts & Bunks' highest profit bunk bed. Why doesn't this actually happen?
Number of Visitors
First, not all of the people that search "Bunk Beds" are going to click our listing. In fact, depending on our rank we may not be able to get ANY of the searches. Let's say we show up in the fourth position when someone searches "Bunk Beds". According to research, the listing in the fourth position is clicked 4.8% of the time. This is known as the Click Through Rate (CTR). So if 4.8% of the 135,000 searches click our listing, we can estimate that 6,480 people will visit our site. This is known as Clicks.
That Buy
Second, of the people that do come to our site, the majority will be looking for a different product than we offer. Perhaps they want a wooden bunk bed (ours is metal), or maybe they want something in a cheaper price range. Regardless of the case, the percent of customers that end up buying what we have is known as the Conversion Rate.
Profitable Products
Lastly, customers searching "Bunk Beds" are likely seeking cheaper bunk beds than customers searching "Premium Bunk Beds". As a result, these customers are likely buying a lower profit product from Francis Lofts & Bunks. This is known as Average Conversion Value, but it is more accurately described as Gross Profit Per Conversion.
Find the keyword that excels in these metrics, and you will find the keyword that will bring you the highest profit.
For each Keyword...
Step 1: Find Monthly Traffic Estimates
There are several tools for this, but I recommend Raven Tools (30-day free trial available) or SEMRush (no account needed for first several searches) for traffic estimation. Google Keyword Planner is also useful and completely free, but it doesn't give real keyword metrics like the old Google Keyword Tool used to provide. Moz is a popular tool, but uses Bing data inste ad of Google for keyword traffic estimates.
Step 2: Estimate Your Google Rank
To estimate your Google Rank for a certain keyword, type it into Google and have a look at the competition on the first page. Be realistic about where you think you can show up, and note whether or not it is possible to get into the #1 position. A great indicator of the level of competition is how closely the businesses showing up relate to the keyword searched. Google is outstanding at matching a search to relevant results, so if the results seem unrelated to the keyword, there is likely room for you to make your move to the top.
Step 3: Estimate your CTR
Based on the rank you just estimated, find your CTR in the right column of the following table:
Step 4: Estimate Your Conversion Rate
This is a tough metric to estimate if you have no online data yet. The main key here is that each keyword has a conversion rate that is relatively accurate compared to the other conversion rates. For instance, "premium bunk beds" will have a higher conversion rate than "cheap bunk beds" since we offer a high-end bunk bed. It would be reasonable to estimate that "premium bunk bed" will have a 4% conversion rate while just "bunk beds" will have a 1% conversion rate.
Step 5: Estimate Your Gross Profit Per Conversion
If our cheapest bunk bed sells for $1000 but costs us $700 to make, then it has a gross profit of $300. If our most expensive bunk bed sells for $1500 but costs us $900 to make, then its gross profit is $600. Since people searching for "premium bunk beds" as opposed to just "bunk beds" are more likely to buy the high end bunk bed, it is reasonable to assume that the gross profit per conversion will be higher for the keyword "premium bunk bed." It would be appropriate to estimate a $500 gross profit per conversion for "premium bunk bed" and $375 gross profit per conversion for "bunk beds".
$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profitable products
$ Keyword Profit = # Searches  *  % CTR *  % Conversion  *  $ Gross Profit Per Conversion
I put together the following Google Rank predictions for Francis Lofts & Bunks keywords:
Using these estimations and the results of my own analysis described in the last section, I generated the table below. Feel free to download my simple SEO Keyword Analysis Tool that I used to generate this table.
It is clear from the table that "Adult Bunk Beds" is the best of the three keywords. Even though "Bunk Beds" has 83 times as many searches per month as "Adult Bunk Beds", its CTR is only 0.1% due to a low estimated Google Rank. This low CTR causes "Adult Bunk Beds" to take the lead in traffic. Further, the conversion rate is highest for "Adult Bunk Beds," meaning for every visitor that comes to our site, more of them are actually buying.
You might be thinking that it seems like an over-simplification to target just ONE keyword. This is of course true. The whole purpose of this exercise is to find your most profitable keyword . Once you know your most profitable keyword, you can start slurping up the similar keywords. For instance, if Francis Lofts & Bunks can achieve the #1 position for the keyword "Adult Bunk Beds", don't you think they'd have a good shot at "Adult Bunk Bed", or "Bunk Beds for Adults."? These adjacent keywords will have very similar ranking, conversion, and profitability profiles, so it is virtually guaranteed that the clicks and profit will be higher than what we estimated in the analysis above.
Knowing which keyword to attack is only the first step toward a comprehensive SEO attack. In my next blog post I will teach you how to optimize your website with the right meta information and content to move quickly up the Google Ranks.
Post by Ryan Francis
email: ryan@launchpadlab.com
twitter: @ryan_p_francis
In 2012 I started Francis Lofts & Bunks, a company that makes loft beds and bunk beds for adults. Since most bunk beds are designed for children, we developed a bed for adults that was modern, heavy-duty, and would look great in a big city apartment.
Francis Lofts & Bunks Queen over Queen Bunk Bed has a weight capacity of 2,000 pounds to support the weight of multiple adults.
Consider the following three keyword options for Francis Lofts with their corresponding monthly searches:
$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profitable products
For the keyword "Bunk Beds", what is the largest amount of profit Francis Lofts & Bunks could obtain via Google Organic results? Best case scenario, every person that searches "Bunk Beds" on Google ends up purchasing Francis Lofts & Bunks' highest profit bunk bed. Why doesn't this actually happen?
Number of Visitors
First, not all of the people that search "Bunk Beds" are going to click our listing. In fact, depending on our rank we may not be able to get ANY of the searches. Let's say we show up in the fourth position when someone searches "Bunk Beds". According to research, the listing in the fourth position is clicked 4.8% of the time. This is known as the Click Through Rate (CTR). So if 4.8% of the 135,000 searches click our listing, we can estimate that 6,480 people will visit our site. This is known as Clicks.
That Buy
Second, of the people that do come to our site, the majority will be looking for a different product than we offer. Perhaps they want a wooden bunk bed (ours is metal), or maybe they want something in a cheaper price range. Regardless of the case, the percent of customers that end up buying what we have is known as the Conversion Rate.
Profitable Products
Lastly, customers searching "Bunk Beds" are likely seeking cheaper bunk beds than customers searching "Premium Bunk Beds". As a result, these customers are likely buying a lower profit product from Francis Lofts & Bunks. This is known as Average Conversion Value, but it is more accurately described as Gross Profit Per Conversion.
Find the keyword that excels in these metrics, and you will find the keyword that will bring you the highest profit.
For each Keyword...
Step 1: Find Monthly Traffic Estimates
There are several tools for this, but I recommend Raven Tools (30-day free trial available) or SEMRush (no account needed for first several searches) for traffic estimation. Google Keyword Planner is also useful and completely free, but it doesn't give real keyword metrics like the old Google Keyword Tool used to provide. Moz is a popular tool, but uses Bing data instead of Google for keyword traffic estimates.
Step 2: Estimate Your Google Rank
To estimate your Google Rank for a certain keyword, type it into Google and have a look at the competition on the first page. Be realistic about where you think you can show up, and note whether or not it is possible to get into the #1 position. A great indicator of the level of competition is how closely the businesses showing up relate to the keyword searched. Google is outstanding at matching a search to relevant results, so if the results seem unrelated to the keyword, there is likely room for you to make your move to the top.
Step 3: Estimate your CTR
Based on the rank you just estimated, find your CTR in the right column of the following table:
Step 4: Estimate Your Conversion Rate
This is a tough metric to estimate if you have no online data yet. The main key here is that each keyword has a conversion rate that is relatively accurate compared to the other conversion rates. For instance, "premium bunk beds" will have a higher conversion rate than "cheap bunk beds" since we offer a high-end bunk bed. It would be reasonable to estimate that "premium bunk bed" will have a 4% conversion rate while just "bunk beds" will have a 1% conversion rate.
Step 5: Estimate Your Gross Profit Per Conversion
If our cheapest bunk bed sells for $1000 but costs us $700 to make, then it ha s a gross profit of $300. If our most expensive bunk bed sells for $1500 but costs us $900 to make, then its gross profit is $600. Since people searching for "premium bunk beds" as opposed to just "bunk beds" are more likely to buy the high end bunk bed, it is reasonable to assume that the gross profit per conversion will be higher for the keyword "premium bunk bed." It would be appropriate to estimate a $500 gross profit per conversion for "premium bunk bed" and $375 gross profit per conversion for "bunk beds".
$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profitable products
$ Keyword Profit = # Searches  *  % CTR *  % Conversion  *  $ Gross Profit Per Conversion
I put together the following Google Rank predictions for Francis Lofts & Bunks keywords:
Using these estimations and the results of my own analysis described in the last section, I generated the table below. Feel free to download my simple SEO Keyword Analysis Tool that I used to generate this table.
It is clear from the table that "Adult Bunk Beds" is the best of the three keywords. Even though "Bunk Beds" has 83 times as many searches per month as "Adult Bunk Beds", its CTR is only 0.1% due to a low estimated Google Rank. This low CTR causes "Adult Bunk Beds" to take the lead in traffic. Further, the conversion rate is highest for "Adult Bunk Beds," meaning for every visitor that comes to our site, more of them are actually buying.
You might be thinking that it seems like an over-simplification to target just ONE keyword. This is of course true. The whole purpose of this exercise is to find your most profitable keyword. Once you know your most profitable keyword, you can start slurping up the similar keywords. For instance, if Francis Lofts & Bunks can achieve the #1 position for the keyword "Adult Bunk Beds", don't you think they'd have a good shot at "Adult Bunk Bed", or "Bunk Beds for Adults."? These adjacent keywords will have very similar ranking, conversion, and profitability profiles, so it is virtually guaranteed that the clicks and profit will be higher than what we estimated in the analysis above.
Knowing which keyword to attack is only the first step toward a comprehensive SEO attack. In my next blog post I will teach you how to optimize your website with the right meta information and content to move quickly up the Google Ranks.
Post by Ryan Francis
email: ryan@launchpadlab.com
twitter: @ryan_p_francis
What up dude?
I'm writing some more here so the post has more to it.
Brendan is better than Ryan.
Test Post #1test-post-1f2014-04-03 21:58:39.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.868000What up dude?
I'm writing some more here so the post has more to it.
Brendan is better than Ryan.
ŠN š5kgAA] ; !A AbusinessIn 2012 I started Francis Lofts & Bunks, a company that makes loft beds and bunk beds for adults. Since most bunk beds are designed for children, we developed a bed for adults that was modern, heavy-duty, and would look great in a big city apartment.
Francis Lofts & Bunks Queen over Queen Bu >
You need to appear important to Google. The primary indicator of your importance online is a metric called PageRank. Basically, every webpage on the planet is assigned PageRank by Google's algorithm. You earn more PageRank when another webpage links to your webpage, and the greater the PageRank of the other webpage, the greater the PageRank you earn. Google will also consider your social presence by analyzing metrics like number of Twitter followers and Facebook likes. Lastly, your website's traffic indicates to Google how popular your website is and may impact your search rankings too.
Find Your Unique Value In The World
To many people, SEO seems like dark magic that only experienced computer geeks can figure out. The reality is that those that are the best at SEO have a deep understanding of the underlying business behind the website. This enables them to identify the keywords that bring people that actually need what the website offers. Your website will be ranked on Google according to its relation to every other website in the world. Because of that, it is important that you create an SEO strategy that reflects your unique value offering.
Let's say you are the best place in Chicago to buy guitars. When someone searches "buy guitar chicago", you are hoping and praying that they end up at your website. If Google had infinite wisdom and was aware of the fact that you are the best guitar shop in Chicago, they would display your listing in the #1 organic search result for the keyword "buy guitar chicago." Right now, Google thinks that Chicago Music Exchange is the best place to buy guitars in Chicago:
If there are lots of suppliers of guitars in Chicago, you can bet your bottom dollar that the users who search "Buy Guitar Chicago" are getting their needs met at Chicago Music Exchange. The greater the competition, the greater the number of listings Google can sift through to find its top results. Because of this, it is important to think of your business in the landscape of the world. You are not the only supplier of guitars, but I bet you do something better than other guitar shops. Perhaps you are the best place to buy high-end guitars. Maybe you have a knack for a certain brand. Or maybe you just are the best place to buy guitars in your neighborhood. Whatever the case, your goal with SEO is to expose your unique value in this world to Google, so that Google can introduce that value to their audience.
Not only does it philisophically make sense for you to focus on exposing your unique value in the world to Google, but the numbers suggest it is the most profitable. Let's start with a tiny (but mighty) metric called Click Through Rate (CTR). CTR indicates how often a user clicks on your listing when searching for something. If for every 1,000 people that search "Buy Guitar Chicago", 100 of them click on your listing, you have a CTR of 10% for that keyword. Research has shown that 70% of all clicks go to an organic search result. Further 18% of the organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% to the #2 position, 7% to the #3 position, and 5% to the #4 position.
What does all of this mean? It means that being in the #1 organic position is exponentially better than any other position. It would be wiser to go after a lower traffic keyword where you can achieve the #1 rank than to go after a large traffic keyword and be a lower rank. Further, if the lower traffic keyword is more relevant to your business, a larger percentage of your visitors will convert into buying customers. If your expertise is in selling high-end guitars, include "high-end guitars" in your SEO strategy . Assuming competition is normal in your industry, this will increase your profit.
In the next lesson, I will walk through the metrics that determine your profitability online, and help you choose an SEO strategy that will maximize your profit.
Post by Ryan Francis
email: ryan@launchpadlab.com
twitter: @ryan_p_francis Learn SEO: Lesson #1 - Introduction to SEOlearn-seo-lesson-1-introduction-to-seot2014-04-02 02:44:14.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.875000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/seo1.jpgModern day treasure hunters are experts at Google. The pile of gold that comes along with that elusive #1 ranking is nothing to joke around about. It is real, it is huge, and it is make or break for thousands of businesses around the world. In the coming blog posts, I will leverage my experience as a web developer and as a business owner to give you the tools and knowledge you need to maximize your profits online. ### What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is about helping the people searching for what you offer find your website. Since Google facilitates this discovery process, you need to inform Google about what you offer. Further, when Google does decide to send the user your way, they will be watching to see if the user's needs are in fact met. The whole process is numbingly simple when you consider the perspectives of the three stakeholders involved: the user, Google, and you. The user is trying to find something they need. Google is trying to help the user find it. And you are trying to bring as much qualified, interested traffic to your website as possible. The criteria for your success are twofold: (1) convince Google that when someone searches for what you offer you are the best website to forward the user to and (2) ensure that the users searching for what you offer are engaged on your website. The ultimate goal of SEO is to come up #1 in the list of **organic search results** for the searches most relevant to your website. Organic results are the listings that Google deems to be the most relevant to a search, as opposed to the advertisements they include in the results. In a later lesson, I will teach you how to optimize your advertising on Google (via their program called Adwords). ### Primary Factors That Drive SEO Performance SEO performance is driven by (1) Keyword Strategy, (2) On-page SEO, and (3) Off-page SEO. **Keyword Strategy** In SEO terminology, keywords are phrases that people search for on Google. The first step in creating an SEO campaign is to figure out which keywords to target. Aim for a keyword that is too broad, and you could be damned to the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th page. Aim for a lower traffic keyword that brings you uninterested visitors, and you won't see the sales you were hoping for. But find the keyword that you can achieve the #1 rank **and** that brings you qualified, interested visitors, and you will see your sales rise. **On-page SEO: Website Structure, Content and Engagement** Before you can be found, Google needs to know what you offer. This means you need to structure your website in a way that enables Google's algorithm to understand what you do. The major key to this is to structure your content with a clear hierarchy. Matching your title and description meta tags with the keywords you are targeting is the first step toward on-page SEO optimization. However, this alone will not bring you success. Google will be assessing how engaged users are on your site. As a result, it will be important to keep your website up-to-date with fresh, captivating content. **Off-page SEO: Web Presence** You need to appear important to Google. The primary indicator of your importance online is a metric called **PageRank**. Basically, every webpage on the planet is assigned PageRank by Google's algorithm. You earn more PageRank when another webpage links to your webpage, and the greater the PageRank of the other webpage, the greater the PageRank you earn. Google will also consider your **social presence** by analyzing metrics like number of Twitter followers and Facebook likes. Lastly, your website's **traffic** indicates to Google how popular your website is and may impact your search rankings too. ### Find Your Unique Value In The World To many people, SEO seems like dark magic that only experienced computer geeks can figure out. The reality is that those that are the best at SEO have a deep understanding of the underlying business behind the website. This enables them to identify the keywords that bring people that actually need what the website offers. Your website will be ranked on Google according to its relation to every other website in the world. Because of that, it is important that you create an SEO strategy that reflects your unique value offering. Let's say you are the best place in Chicago to buy guitars. When someone searches "buy guitar chicago", you are hoping and praying that they end up at your website. If Google had infinite wisdom and was aware of the fact that you are the best guitar shop in Chicago, they would display your listing in the #1 organic search result for the keyword "buy guitar chicago." Right now, Google thinks that Chicago Music Exchange is the best place to buy guitars in Chicago:If there are lots of suppliers of guitars in Chicago, you can bet your bottom dollar that the users who search "Buy Guitar Chicago" are getting their needs met at Chicago Music Exchange. The greater the competition, the greater the number of listings Google can sift through to find its top results. Because of this, it is important to think of your business in the landscape of the world. You are not the only supplier of guitars, but I bet you do something better than other guitar shops. Perhaps you are the best place to buy high-end guitars. Maybe you have a knack for a certain brand. Or maybe you just are the best place to buy guitars in your neighborhood. Whatever the case, **your goal with SEO is to expose your unique value in this world to Google, so that Google can introduce that value to their audience.** Not only does it philisophically make sense for you to focus on exposing your unique value in the world to Google, but the numbers suggest it is the most profitable. Let's start with a tiny (but mighty) metric called Click Through Rate (CTR). CTR indicates how often a user clicks on your listing when searching for something. If for every 1,000 people that search "Buy Guitar Chicago", 100 of them click on your listing, you have a CTR of 10% for that keyword. Research has shown that 70% of all clicks go to an organic search result. Further 18% of the organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% to the #2 position, 7% to the #3 position, and 5% to the #4 position.
What does all of this mean? It means that being in the #1 organic position is exponentially better than any other position. It would be wiser to go after a lower traffic keyword where you can achieve the #1 rank than to go after a large traffic keyword and be a lower rank. Further, if the lower traffic keyword is more relevant to your business, a larger percentage of your visitors will convert into buying customers. If your expertise is in selling high-end guitars, include "high-end guitars" in your SEO strategy. Assuming competition is normal in your industry, this will increase your profit. In the next lesson, I will walk through the metrics that determine your profitability online, and help you choose an SEO strategy that will maximize your profit.
**Post by Ryan Francis**
email: ryan@launchpadlab.com
twitter: @ryan_p_francisseo1.jpgimage/jpeg1G2015-06-30 18:56:14.6193702014-04-02 02:44:14.000000 # # ùJ ú#aYAAgôY !A AbusinessModern day treasure hunters are experts at Google. The pile of gold that comes along with that elusive #1 ranking is nothing to joke around about. It is real, it is huge, and it is make or break for thousands of businesses around the world.
In the coming blog posts, I will leverage my experience as a web developer and as a business owner to give you the tools and knowledge you need to maximize your profits online.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is about helping the people searching for what you offer find your website. Since Google facilitates this discovery process, you need to inform Google about what you offer. Further, when Google does decide to send the user your way, they will be watching to see if the user's needs are in fact met.
The whole process is numbingly simple when you consider the perspectives of the three stakeholders involved: the user, Google, and you. The user is trying to find something they need. Google is trying to help the user find it. And you are trying to bring as much qualified, interested traffic to your website as possible. The criteria for your success are twofold: (1) convince Google that when someone searches for what you offer you are the best website to forward the user to and (2) ensure that the users searching for what you offer are engaged on your website.
The ultimate goal of SEO is to come up #1 in the list of organic search results for the searches most relevant to your website. Organic results are the listings that Google deems to be the most relevant to a search, as opposed to the advertisements they include in the results. In a later lesson, I will teach you how to optimize your advertising on Google (via their program called Adwords).
Primary Factors That Drive SEO Performance
SEO performance is driven by (1) Keyword Strategy, (2) On-page SEO, and (3) Off-page SEO.
Keyword Strategy
In SEO terminology, keywords are phrases that people search for on Google. The first step in creating an SEO campaign is to figure out which keywords to target. Aim for a keyword that is too broad, and you could be damned to the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th page. Aim for a lower traffic keyword that brings you uninterested visitors, and you won't see the sales you were hoping for. But find the keyword that you can achieve the #1 rank and that brings you qualified, interested visitors, and you will see your sales rise.
On-page SEO: Website Structure, Content and Engagement
Before you can be found, Google needs to know what you offer. This means you need to structure your website in a way that enables Google's algorithm to understand what you do. The major key to this is to structure your content with a clear hierarchy. Matching your title and description meta tags with the keywords you are targeting is the first step toward on-page SEO optimization. However, this alone will not bring you success. Google will be assessing how engaged users are on your site. As a result, it will be important to keep your website up-to-date with fresh, captivating content.
Off-page SEO: Web Presence
Remember that the only goal to this keyword analysis is to find the keyword that will maximize profit. We need to find the keyword that will drive lots of visitors to our site that are ready to buy our most profitable products. If you owned a music shop in Chicago that specialized in high-end guitars, your business would fail if the majority of your foot traffic were customers looking for the cheapest guitars in town. Your ideal customers are experienced guitarists looking for high-end guitars. Instead of targeting the keyword "guitars", you should target "high-end guitars." Or better yet: "high-end guitars Chicago".
Learn The Metrics That Drive Profit
$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profitable products
For the keyword "Bunk Beds", what is the largest amount of profit Francis Lofts & Bunks could obtain via Google Organic results? Best case scenario, every person that searches "Bunk Beds" on Google ends up purchasing Francis Lofts & Bunks' highest profit bunk bed. Why doesn't this actually happen?
Number of Visitors
First, not all of the people that search "Bunk Beds" are going to click our listing. In fact, depending on our rank we may not be able to get ANY of the searches. Let's say we show up in the fourth position when someone searches "Bunk Beds". According to research, the listing in the fourth position is clicked 4.8% of the time. This is known as the Click Through Rate (CTR). So if 4.8% of the 135,000 searches click our listing, we can estimate that 6,480 people will visit our site. This is known as Clicks.
That Buy
Second, of the people that do come to our site, the majority will be looking for a different product than we offer. Perhaps they want a wooden bunk bed (ours is metal), or maybe they want something in a cheaper price range. Regardless of the case, the percent of customers that end up buying what we have is known as the Conversion Rate.
Profitable Products
Lastly, customers searching "Bunk Beds" are likely seeking cheaper bunk beds than customers searching "Premium Bunk Beds". As a result, these customers are likely buying a lower profit product from Francis Lofts & Bunks. This is known as Average Conversion Value, but it is more accurately described as Gross Profit Per Conversion.
# Searches = # of times keyword is searched in a period of time
% CTR (Click Through Rate) = how often your listing is clicked by the searcher
% Conversion = how often a visitor accomplishes something you want them to, like signing up, purchasing something, or submitting a question
$ Gross Profit Per Conversion = average gross profit per conversion for keyword, where gross profit is revenue - cost of sale
Find the keyword that excels in these metrics, and you will find the keyword that will bring you the highest profit.
Find The Metrics For Your K $eywords
For each Keyword...
Step 1: Find Monthly Traffic Estimates
I recommend SEMRush to do this. Google Keyword Planner is also useful and completely free, but it doesn't give straight away keyword metrics like the old Google Keyword Tool used to provide. SEMRush is free to use for a bit if you sign up with an account.
Step 2: Estimate Your Google RankTo estimate your Google Rank for a certain keyword, type it into Google and have a look at the competition on the first page. Be realistic about where you think you can show up, and note whether or not it is possible to get into the #1 position. A great indicator of the level of competition is how closely the businesses showing up relate to the keyword searched. Google is outstanding at matching a search to relevant results, so if the results seem unrelated to the keyword, there is likely room for you to make your move to the top.
Step 3: Estimate your CTRBased on the rank you just estimated, find your CTR in the right column of the following table:
Step 4: Estimate Your Conversion RateThis is a tough metric to estimate if you have no online data yet. The main key here is that each keyword has a conversion rate that is relatively accurate compared to the other conversion rates. For instance, "high-end guitars Chicago" will have a higher conversion rate than "guitars" for our Chicago music shop selling high-end guitars. It would be reasonable to estimate that "high-end guitars Chicago" will have a 10% conversion rate while just "guitars" will have a 1.5% conversion rate.
Step 5: Estimate Your Gross Profit Per ConversionIf our cheapest guitar sells for $300 but costs us $200 to buy, then it has a gross profit of $100. If our most expensive guitar sells for $1000 but costs us $600, then its gross profit is $400. Since people searching for "high-end guitars" as opposed to just "guitars" are more likely buy the more expensive guitar, this keyword's Gross Profit Per Conversion will likely be between $300 - $400. "Guitars", on the other hand, will likely have a Gross Profit Per Conversion between $100 - $250 since the majority of visitors will be looking for your average run of the mill guitar.
Crunch The Numbers To Calculate The Highest Profit Keyword
$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profitable products
$ Keyword Profit = # Searches  *  % CTR *  % Conversion  *  $ Gross Profit Per Conversion
I put together the following Google Rank predictions for Francis Lofts & Bunks keywords:
âBunk Bedsâ: Position #25 (CTR: 0.1% or lower)
âAdult Bunk Bedsâ: Position #1 (CTR = 12.6%)
âQueen Bunk Bedsâ: Position #4 (CTR = 3.5%)
Using these estimations and the results of my own analysis described in the last section, I generated the table below. Feel free to download my simple SEO Keyword Analysis Tool that I used to generate this table.
It is clear from the table that "Adult Bunk Beds" is the best of the three keywords. Even though "Bunk Beds" has 83 times as many searches per month as "Adult Bunk Beds", its CTR is only 0.1% due to % a low estimated Google Rank. This low CTR causes "Adult Bunk Beds" to take the lead in traffic. Further, the conversion rate is highest for "Adult Bunk Beds," meaning for every visitor that comes to our site, more of them are actually buying.
Understanding The Big Picture Strategy
You might be thinking that it seems like an over-simplification to target just ONE keyword. This is of course true. The whole purpose of this exercise is to find your most profitable keyword. Once you know your most profitable keyword, you can start slurping up the similar keywords. For instance, if Francis Lofts & Bunks can achieve the #1 position for the keyword "Adult Bunk Beds", don't you think they'd have a good shot at "Adult Bunk Bed", or "Bunk Beds for Adults."? These adjacent keywords will have very similar ranking, conversion, and profitability profiles, so it is virtually guaranteed that the clicks and profit will be higher than what we estimated in the analysis above.
Knowing which keyword to attack is only the first step toward a comprehensive SEO attack. In my next blog post I will teach you how to optimize your website with the right meta information and content to move quickly up the Google Ranks.
Additional Tools
References
Learn SEO: Lesson #2 - Find Your Most Profitable Keywordlearn-seo-lesson-2-find-your-most-profitable-keywordf2014-01-25 23:46:55.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.886000In 2012 I started Francis Lofts & Bunks, a company that makes loft beds and bunk beds for adults. Since most bunk beds are designed for children, we developed a bed for adults that was modern, heavy-duty, and would look great in a big city apartment.
### Learn The Metrics That Drive Profit **$ Keyword Profit =Â Number of visitors that buy profit &able products ** For the keyword "Bunk Beds", what is the largest amount of profit Francis Lofts & Bunks could obtain via Google Organic results? Best case scenario, every person that searches "Bunk Beds" on Google ends up purchasing Francis Lofts & Bunks' highest profit bunk bed. Why doesn't this actually happen? **Number of Visitors** First, not all of the people that search "Bunk Beds" are going to click our listing. In fact, depending on our rank we may not be able to get ANY of the searches. Let's say we show up in the fourth position when someone searches "Bunk Beds". According to research, the listing in the fourth position is clicked 4.8% of the time. This is known as the **Click Through Rate (CTR)**. So if 4.8% of the 135,000 searches click our listing, we can estimate that 6,480 people will visit our site. This is known as **Clicks**. **That Buy** Second, of the people that do come to our site, the majority will be looking for a different product than we offer. Perhaps they want a wooden bunk bed (ours is metal), or maybe they want something in a cheaper price range. Regardless of the case, the percent of customers that end up buying what we have is known as the **Conversion Rate**. **Profitable Products** Lastly, customers searching "Bunk Beds" are likely seeking cheaper bunk beds than customers searching "Premium Bunk Beds". As a result, these customers are likely buying a lower profit product from Francis Lofts & Bunks. This is known as **Average Conversion Value**, but it is more accurately described as **Gross Profit Per Conversion**. - **\# Searches** = # of times keyword is searched in a period of time - **% CTR (Click Through Rate)** = how often your listing is clicked by the searcher - **% Conversion** = how often a visitor accomplishes something you want them to, like signing up, purchasing something, or submitting a question - **$ Gross Profit Per Conversion** = average gross profit per conversion for keyword, where gross profit is revenue - cost of sale Find the keyword that excels in these metrics, and you will find the keyword that will bring you the highest profit.
### Find The Metrics For Your Keywords For each Keyword... **Step 1: Find Monthly Traffic Estimates** I recommend SEMRush to do this. Google Keyword Planner is also useful and completely free, but it doesn't give straight away keyword metrics like the old Google Keyword Tool used to provide. SEMRush is free to use for a bit if you sign up with an account.
**Step 2: Estimate Your Google Rank** To estimate your Google Rank for a certain keyword, type it into Google and have a look at the competition on the first page. Be realistic about where you think you can show up, and note whether or not it is possible to get into the #1 position. A great indicator of the level of competition is how closely the businesses showing up relate to the keyword searched. Google is outstanding at matching a search to relevant results, so if the results seem unrelated to the keyword, there is likely room for you to make your move to the top.
**Step 3: Estimate your CTR** Based on the rank you just estimated, find your CTR in the right column of the following table:
**Step 4: Estimate Your Conversion Rate** This is a tough metric to estimate if you have no online data yet. The main key here is that each keyword has a conversion rate that is **relatively** accurate compared to the other conversion rates. For instance, "high-end guitars Chicago" will have a higher conversion rate than "guitars" for our Chicago music shop selling high-end guitars. It would be reasonable to estimate that "high-end guitars Chicago" will have a 10% conversion rate while just "guitars" will have a 1.5% conversion rate.
**Step 5: Estimate Your Gross Profit Per Conversion** If our cheapest guitar sells for $300 but costs us $200 to buy, then it has a gross profit of $100. If our most expensive guitar sells for $1000 but costs us $600, then its gross profit is $400. Since people searching for "high-end guitars" as opposed to just "guitars" are more likely buy the more expensive guitar, this keyword's Gross Profit Per Conversion will likely be between $300 - $400. "Guitars", on the other hand, will likely have a Gross Profit Per Conversion between $100 - $250 since the majority of visitors will be looking for your average run of the mill guitar.
### Crunch The Numbers To Calculate The Highest Profit Keyword **$ Keyword Profit = Number of visitors that buy profitable products ** **$ Keyword Profit = # Searches  \*  % CTR \*  % Conversion  \*  $ Gross Profit Per Conversion** I put together the following Google Rank predictions for Francis Lofts & Bunks keywords: - âBunk Bedsâ: Position #25 (CTR: 0.1% or lower) - âAdult Bunk Bedsâ: Position #1 (CTR = 12.6%) - âQueen Bunk Bedsâ: Position #4 (CTR = 3.5%) Using these estimations and the results of my own analysis described in the last section, I generated the table below. Feel free to download my simple SEO Keyword Analysis Tool that I used to generate this table.
### Understanding The Big Picture Strategy You might be thinking that it seems like an over-simplification to target just ONE keyword. This is of course true. The whole purpose of this exercise is to find your **most profitable keyword**. Once you know your most profitable keyword, you can start slurping up the similar keywords. For instance, if Francis Lofts & Bunks can achieve the #1 position for the keyword "Adult Bunk Beds", don't you think they'd have a good shot at "Adult Bunk Bed", or "Bunk Beds for Adults."? These adjacent keywords will have very similar ranking, conversion, and profitability profiles, so it is virtually guaranteed that the clicks and profit will be higher than what we estimated in the analysis above. Knowing which keyword to attack is only the first step toward a comprehensive SEO attack. In my next blog post I will teach you how to optimize your website with the right meta information and content to move quickly up the Google Ranks.
### Additional Tools - SEO Keyword Analysis Tool - Google Keyword Planner - SEMRush ### References - A Tale Of Two Studies: Google vs. Bing Click-Through Rate - 8 SEO Stats That Are Hard to Ignore ß ß š Ż}uAA businessIn 2012 I started Francis Lofts & Bunks, a company that makes loft beds and bunk beds for adults. Since most bunk beds are designed for children, we developed a bed for adults that was modern, heavy-duty, and would look great in a big city apartment.
Francis Lofts & Bunks Queen over Queen Bunk Bed has a weight capacity of 2,000 pounds to support the weight of multiple adults.
Consider the following three keyword options for Francis Lofts with their corresponding monthly searches:
Bunk Beds (135,000)
Adult Bunk Beds (1,600)
Queen Bunk Beds (1,300)
Before we go further, take a moment and try to think o " Ą Ą \ ;UUAAC5!A Abusiness
LaunchPad Lab - Tom Cullen from Technori on Vimeo.
Imagine waking up every morning and coming to work knowing that you could make a significant impact on the world. I can imagine that this is the feeling that people like Bill Gates have as they see the success that projects at Gates Foundation have. The same goes for the those working at Twitter when they saw their platform helping push countries toward democracy. Red Cross volunteers also get that same feeling when rushing in to help save lives after a natural disaster.
I believe strongly in using your skills to do good, just as these people are doing.
At LaunchPad Lab our skills include software design and development. In working with MD Anderson in Houston TX, we discovered how we can use our talents to help one of the top cancer centers in the world find cures faster. This ability make an impact is so gratifying and we hope that we can someday be as successful as the people above.
Recently I spoke at Technori Healthcare Tech describing what we are doing. Take a look!
Using our skills to help cure cancerusing-our-skills-to-help-cure-cancert2014-11-11 15:47:56.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.028000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/using-our-skills.jpgLaunchPad Lab - Tom Cullen from Technori on Vimeo.
Imagine waking up every morning and coming to work knowing that you could make a significant impact on the world. I can imagine that this is the feeling that people like Bill Gates have as they see the success that projects at Gates Foundation have. The same goes for the those working at Twitter when they saw their platform helping push countries toward democracy. Red Cross volunteers also get that same feeling when rushing in to help save lives after a natural disaster.
I believe strongly in using your skills to do good, just as these people are doing.
At LaunchPad Lab our skills include software design and development. In working with MD Anderson in Houston TX, we discovered how we can use our talents to help one of the top cancer centers in the world find cures faster. This ability make an impact is so gratifying and we hope that we can someday be as successful as the people above.
Recently I spoke at Technori Healthcare Tech describing what we are doing. Take a look!
using-our-skills.jpgimage/jpeg ù2015-06-30 18:56:15.5105362014-11-11 15:47:56.000000 í í oA7AA g businesshttp://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm
How to Learn.....Anything!how-to-learn-anythingf2013-01-25 21:39:54.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.828000http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htmn 77AA ] !A AwebYouâve probably heard the phrase âDive right in.â We embraced that philosophy to start a set of workshops we called âJump into Javascript.â It is important to give back to the community and through teaching, we are able to help others learn while also fine tuning our skills.
We composed our three class curriculum focused on Javascript and Ruby on Rails and sent it out to the community to start collecting sign ups. Within twenty minutes, we had sold out the class and had a wait list started! We knew we were onto something and were excited by the chance to help an eager group of students.
Throughout the classes, we taught these students such topics as the jQuery and jQueryUI libraries as well as integration with AJAX requests. We built our own calculator from scratch and launched a Twitter search tool using their API. We focused these classes on practical real-life examples that the students could take back to their jobs and coding projects. It is important, especially in the coding world, to stay up to date on the latest technologies to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape.
These classes tested the skills of our students and created a foundation to help them to explore and dive deeper into Javascript. It is great to see students pick up on new concepts, but Itâs even better to see them do it and have fun. We certainly had a blast and cannot wait to offer the next set of workshops.
Stay tuned.
Jump into Programmingjump-into-programmingt2013-05-15 14:51:22.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.114000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/programming.jpgYouâve probably heard the phrase âDive right in.â We embraced that philosophy to start a set of workshops we called âJump into Javascript.â It is important to give back to the community and through teaching, we are able to help others learn while also fine tuning our skills. We composed our three class curriculum focused on Javascript and Ruby on Rails and sent it out to the community to start collecting sign ups. Within twenty minutes, we had sold out the class and had a wait list started! We knew we were onto something and were excited by the chance to help an eager group of students. Throughout the classes, we taught these students such topics as the jQuery and jQueryUI libraries as well as integration with AJAX requests. We built our own calculator from scratch and launched a Twitter search tool using their API. We focused these classes on practical real-life examples that the students could take back to their jobs and coding projects. It is important, especially in the coding world, to stay up to date on the latest technologies to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape. These classes tested the skills of our students and created a foundation to help them to explore and dive deeper into Javascript. It is great to see students pick up on new concepts, but Itâs even better to see them do it and have fun. We certainly had a blast and cannot wait to offer the next set of workshops. Stay tuned.code.jpgimage/jpegò2015-06-30 18:56:16.7271092013-05-15 14:51:22.000000 apartment or vacation home" is there to entice our potential future buyers. We have found that the majority of our loft beds go in apartments (often studios) and the majority of our bunk beds go in vacation homes. As such, people in those situations are often the ones searching for our website. We want those people to look at our description and feel personally connected with us.The next bit, "with a bunk bed or loft bed designed for adults" takes care of the relevance aspect. And finally, "featuring 10 available colors and a huge weight capacity" highlights how our beds differ from other bunk beds and loft beds in the marketplace (and thus the other listings on the search engine results) to entice the user to click our listing.
Learn SEO #3: On-Page SEOlearn-seo-3-on-page-seof2014-04-21 19:25:10.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.834000Now that you've decided on a keyword to build your SEO strategy around, it's time to start writing some code. Our goal is to write our HTML in a clean, organized manner that corresponds with the web standards Google expects.
HTML Structure
Page Title & Description
Every HTML page has a head section at the top of the HTML code. This section is where the title and description tags go. These two tags are the most critical on-page SEO factors.
Title
The Title should describe your page in 60 or fewer characters, and it is vital that it is very closely linked to the keywords you are targeting. In the last lesson, we concluded that the keyword phrase "Adult Bunk Beds" would be the most profitable for Francis Lofts & Bunks. How then should we construct the title of our home page?
If we only sold bunk beds, the title should be: "Adult Bunk Beds". However, we also sell loft beds. While it is important to tie our page title closely to the keywords we are targeting, it is also important that the title accurately represents its corresponding web page. In almost every situation with SEO, the question to consider is not "What is best for the website?" but instead "What is best for the user?", and in this instance, displaying a page title that properly reflects your website is what is best for the user.
In the case of our home page, this means that the title must be abstract enough to represent our company as a whole. Since we sell both bunk beds and loft beds, and specialize in that they are made for adults, a good home page title is "Bunk Beds and Loft Beds for Adults". This title is great because it is likely we will rank for keywords related to both adult bunk beds and adult loft beds.
Description
Your description needs to be (1) relevant to your webpage, (2) enticing to the users you want it to be enticing for, and (3) less than 155 characters. I spent a lot of time coming up with the following description for Francis Lofts & Bunks:
Increase the space in your apartment or vacation home with a bunk bed or loft bed designed for adults, featuring 10 available colors and a huge weight capacity.
The first bit, "Increase the space in your apartment or vacation home" is there to entice our potential future buyers. We have found that the majority of our loft beds go in apartments (often studios) and the majority of our bunk beds go in vacation homes. As such, people in those situations are often the ones searching for our website. We want those people to look at our description and feel personally connected with us.
The next bit, "with a bunk bed or loft bed designed for adults" takes care of the relevance aspect. And finally, "featuring 10 available colors and a huge weight capacity" highlights how our beds differ from other bunk beds and loft beds in the marketplace (and thus the other listings on the search engine results) to entice the user to click our listing.
ł_ Čs?;AA Č] businessNow that you've decided on a keyword to build your SEO strategy around, it's time to start writing some code. Our goal is to write our HTML in a clean, organized manner that corresponds with the web standards Google expects.
HTML Structure
Page Title & Description
Every HTML page has a head section at the top of the HTML code. This section is where the title and description tags go. These two tags are the most critical on-page SEO factors.
Title
The Title should describe your page in 60 or fewer characters, and it is vital that it is very closely linked to the keywords you are targeting. In the last lesson, we concluded that the keyword phrase "Adult Bunk Beds" would be the most profitable for Francis Lofts & Bunks. How then should we construct the title of our home page?
If we only sold bunk beds, the title should be: "Adult Bunk Beds". However, we also sell loft beds. While it is important to tie our page title closely to the keywords we are targeting, it is also important that the title accurately represents its corresponding web page. In almost every situation with SEO, the question to consider is not "What is best for the website?" but instead "What is best for the user?", and in this instance, displaying a page title that properly reflects your website is what is best for the user.
In the case of our home page, this means that the title must be abstract enough to represent our company as a whole. Since we sell both bunk beds and loft beds, and specialize in that they are made for adults, a good home page title is "Bunk Beds and Loft Beds for Adults". This title is great because it is likely we will rank for keywords related to both adult bunk beds and adult loft beds.
Description
Your description needs to be (1) relevant to your webpage, (2) enticing to the users you want it to be enticing for, and (3) less than 155 characters. I spent a lot of time coming up with the following description for Francis Lofts & Bunks:
Increase the space in your apartment or vacation home with a bunk bed or loft bed designed for adults, featuring 10 available colors and a huge weight capacity.
The first bit, "Increase the space in your * o device features and APIs, perform well but still behind native app performance
- Publishing to App Stores and Updating Apps
Native: Regardless of the platform, native apps are published to an app store with strict rules for acceptance, updates require new version to be downloaded
Mobile: Doesnât need to be published to any store (accessed by the browser), updates are very simple
How do I decide?
Sometimes a native app makes sense and other times it might be a web app. In general, if video game type speed is not needed and there are considerable financial/time constraints, a web app will probably make more sense.
We know this process can be difficult, so if you've got an idea and you're not sure what your next steps should be, reach out to us and we'll help you navigate.
(See this article for more information.)
Building your Idea for Mobile? Know the facts: Native vs. Web App.building-your-idea-for-mobile-know-the-facts-native-vs-web-appt2013-01-16 22:09:03.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.840000The growth of the smart phone industry the past few years has truly been astounding. It seems as though every day there is a new model out there to try (and hopefully buy). While the amount of choice might seem like a blessing, keeping track of all the phones and their operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) poses quite a challenge.
Most people out there only need to know about their phone. However for you, as someone trying to make their idea come to life on these devices, there are some things you should know to help you navigate the landscape. We will focus here on deciding between a native or web app.
Native vs. Web App.
Native app: A native app is one that is downloaded and installed on the mobile device.
Web app: A web app is an HTML5, JavaScript, CSS app running in a mobile web browser.
Factors to consider for these apps.
- Skills to build
Native: Requires strong knowledge of Objective C (iOS), Java (Android), and C# (Windows Phone), finding developers with the necessary experience is difficult and expensive
Web: Knowledge foundation is HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, finding strong developers should be easier and more cost effective
- Platforms
Native: Number of apps you need to build directly relates to the number of platforms you need to support (most companies must support at least iOS, Android, and probably Windows 8/Phone)
Web: Can be opened on any device with a browser, phone, tablet, or anything in between, differences in mobile browsers will require extensive testing
- Features and Performance
Native: Full access to the underlying mobile platform, usually very fast and polished
Web: Limited (but growing) access to device features and APIs, perform well but still behind native app performance
- Publishing to App Stores and Updating Apps
Native: Regardless of the platform, native apps are published to an app store with strict rules for acceptance, updates require new version to be downloaded
Mobile: Doesnât need to be published to any store (accessed by the browser), updates are very simple
How do I decide?
Sometimes a native app makes sense and other times it might be a web app. In general, if video game type speed is not needed and there are considerable financial/time constraints, a web app will probably make more sense.
We know this process can be difficult, so if you've got an idea and you're not sure what your next steps should be, reach out to us and we'll help you navigate.
(See this article for more information.)
2013-01-16 22:09:03.000000 ż žż X AA K AbusinessIt's always tough to relate abstract business concepts to everyday life. Hopefully the movie Moneyball can be a good real-life example.
For those that love sports analogies: Business Lessons from Moneyballfor-those-that-love-sports-analogies-business-lessons-from-moneyballt2013-01-21 20:37:05.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.851000It's always tough to relate abstract business concepts to everyday life. Hopefully the movie Moneyball can be a good real-life example. [See the article](http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130115162356-658789-19-brilliant-business-lessons-from-moneyball "Moneyball article")2013-01-21 20:37:05.000000 CCAA o AbusinessWe were recently on TastyTrade's Bootstraping in America series. Check out the video:
LaunchPad Lab on TastyTradelaunchpad-lab-on-tastytradet2013-01-09 20:02:50.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.846000We were recently on [TastyTrade's](https://www.tastytrade.com) Bootstraping in America series. Check out the video: 2013-01-09 20:02:50.000000ź= ŹU AA Źa AbusinessThe growth of the smart phone industry the past few years has truly been astounding. It seems as though every day there is a new model out there to try (and hopefully buy). While the amount of choice might seem like a blessing, keeping track of all the phones and their operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) poses quite a challenge.
Most people out there only need to know about their phone. However for you, as someone trying to make their idea come to life on these devices, there are some things you should know to help you navigate the landscape. We will focus here on deciding between a native or web app.
Native vs. Web App.
Native app: A native app is one that is downloaded and installed on the mobile device.
Web app: A web app is an HTML5, JavaScript, CSS app running in a mobile web browser.
Factors to consider for these apps.
- Skills to build
Native: Requires strong knowledge of Objective C (iOS), Java (Android), and C# (Windows Phone), finding developers with the necessary experience is difficult and expensive
Web: Knowledge foundation is HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, finding strong developers should be easier and more cost effective
- Platforms
Native: Number of apps you need to build directly relates to the number of platforms you need to support (most companies must support at least iOS, Android, and probably Windows 8/Phone)
Web: Can be opened on any device with a browser, phone, tablet, or anything in between, differences in mobile browsers will require extensive testing
- Features and Performance
Native: Full access to the underlying mobile platform, usually very fast and polished
Web: Limited (but growing) access t , ' Ï ¶' ! OwwAA 5 Abusiness
Here is an interesting look inside of a new start-up, Buffer, and their lessons learned on user experience.
Everything Is a Hypothesis That Needs to be Validatedeverything-is-a-hypothesis-that-needs-to-be-validatedt2013-02-17 20:58:12.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.904000Here is an interesting look inside of a new start-up, Buffer, and their lessons learned on user experience. Read more...2013-02-17 20:58:12.000000 iggAA O AbusinessBuilt in Chicago put together this great overview of the Chicago start-up scene. See the most active industry sectors and what types of companies are getting the most funding.
A Quick Look at Chicago's 2012 Start-Up Scenea-quick-look-at-chicago-s-2012-start-up-scenet2013-02-07 19:20:17.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.896000Built in Chicago put together this great overview of the Chicago start-up scene. See the most active industry sectors and what types of companies are getting the most funding. Read more2013-02-07 19:20:17.000000. %WWAA m AwebThe "golden" rule of User Experience / Interaction design....
Start looking at websites as solutions, solutions to problems.
See how to do this in practice
10 Great Thoughts on UX/UI Web Design10-great-thoughts-on-ux-ui-web-designt2013-02-01 04:03:57.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.915000The "golden" rule of User Experience / Interaction design.... Start looking at websites as solutions, solutions to problems. See how to do this in practice2013-02-01 04:03:57.000000 ú êú ÂM# ÀEAAAAÀC?!A Aweb
Front-end Designers spend vast amounts of time working to achieve pixel perfection. They sweat the details until each pixel is in just the right place on the web page. But in doing so they often overlook one of the most critical pieces to truly great web design - adding a level of stylesheet design.
In my experience, I tend to see this repeated pattern: A beauti 0" --AA O business
When we got a message during the Super Bowl, it was the first we had heard of Hanson in years. They were the band that brought us the song MMMBop and they were looking for some web help. They wanted a new look on their site that coincided with the new new album they had coming out. The code behind their site hadn't been touched in years so there were many issues that other developers were unwilling to touch. They found us through our friends at 37 Signals and the site rescue began.
For the rest of the game we were only partially watching Baltimore beat San Francisco since we were looking up everything we could about what the band was up to so we could get right to work. The day after easter they were announcing new album ANTHEM and a world tour so there was no time to waste.
10am that Monday we launched the new site with the big news to thousands of (screaming) fans. :)
Here are a few things we at LaunchPad Lab do to help create elegant and robust stylesheets.
One of the biggest problems teams face is coming to a consensus on a common coding language. Should you develop the application with vanilla CSS, should you use LESS or SASS? My advice is to use the language that makes sense to your team.
Vague. I know. But each application is different and calls for a different stack. At the Lab, we make every attempt to design our products with SASS. The structure and versatility of this language made it a no brainer for our team.
That's not to say that it was an easy transition. We have iterated several times on our best practices and are continuing to find new ways to improve our workflow.
The one thing though that has stayed consistent is our use of SASS. We agreed early on to use it and have not looked back since.
As applications grow and scale, it becomes critical that stylesheets are easy to read and maintain. At LaunchPad Lab we think "big" before honing in on the "small" details that each feature contains. What does this mean exactly?
During the inception period of a product, we identify HTML elements that share similar attributes. These are anything from blocks of content that appear multiple times throughout an application or simple elements such as links that share colors. By identifying these elements early, we can better create global styles that can be re-used throughout the application.
This process allows us to create one stylesheet that shapes the structure of each view in the application's interface. Rather than creating a specific stylesheet for each view, we develop a global page view file. This file exists for one reason - contain common page elements to keep our code reusable and flexible.
Making sure your entire team is on board with syntax is important. At LaunchPad Lab we agreed that our class names would be written with a dash if needed, not an underscore or camel cased. We have found this technique is vital when working on multiple projects at once. Designers and developers no longer need to manage personal preference styles or worse, mixing syntax styles.
I am stickler for clear, readable code. If I had more room on my business card, my role would expand to Style Officer.
Be consistent.
At LaunchPad Lab we order CSS properties alphabetically. This way developers and designers know exactly where to find a specific property to update. When moving from project to project, this consistent style has allowed our team to move fluidly between projects without having to study the application's code structure.
Designing a stylesheet is not an easy task and requires buy-in from you and your team. We know. But we have found that stylesheet design vastly improves code maintainability and provides a consistent and reliable user experience.
Designing Your Stylesheetsdesigning-your-stylesheetst2014-05-14 21:37:32.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.922000http://cl.ly/image/2o1X3F2b0I3m/designing-stylesheets.jpg
Front-end Designers spend vast amounts of time working to achieve pixel perfection. They sweat the details until each pixel is in just the right place on the web page. But in doing so they ofte n overlook one of the most critical pieces to truly great web design - adding a level of stylesheet design.
In my experience, I tend to see this repeated pattern: A beautiful web site accompanied by a "horrendous" stylesheet. Poorly organized stylesheets may not affect user experience in the short term. However, improper stylesheet design most certainly results in a degraded user experience as even small code changes bubble up as elements on the page "break." As designers and front-end developers we need to do a better job designing beautiful interfaces backed by robust CSS design.
Here are a few things we at LaunchPad Lab do to help create elegant and robust stylesheets.
One of the biggest problems teams face is coming to a consensus on a common coding language. Should you develop the application with vanilla CSS, should you use LESS or SASS? My advice is to use the language that makes sense to your team.
Vague. I know. But each application is different and calls for a different stack. At the Lab, we make every attempt to design our products with SASS. The structure and versatility of this language made it a no brainer for our team.
That's not to say that it was an easy transition. We have iterated several times on our best practices and are continuing to find new ways to improve our workflow.
The one thing though that has stayed consistent is our use of SASS. We agreed early on to use it and have not looked back since.
As applications grow and scale, it becomes critical that stylesheets are easy to read and maintain. At LaunchPad Lab we think "big" before honing in on the "small" details that each feature contains. What does this mean exactly?
During the inception period of a product, we identify HTML elements that share similar attributes. These are anything from blocks of content that appear multiple times throughout an application or simple elements such as links that share colors. By identifying these elements early, we can better create global styles that can be re-used throughout the application.
This process allows us to create one stylesheet that shapes the structure of each view in the application's interface. Rather than creating a specific stylesheet for each view, we develop a global page view file. This file exists for one reason - contain common page elements to keep our code reusable and flexible.
Making sure your entire team is on board with syntax is important. At LaunchPad Lab we agreed that our class names would be written with a dash if needed, not an underscore or camel cased. We have found this technique is vital when working on multiple projects at once. Designers and developers no longer need to manage personal preference styles or worse, mixing syntax styles.
I am stickler for clear, readable code. If I had more room on my business card, my role would expand to Style Officer.
Be consistent.
At LaunchPad Lab we order CSS properties alphabetically. This way developers and designers know exactly where to find a specific property to update. When moving from project to project, this consistent style has allowed our team to move fluidly between projects without having to study the application's code structure.
Designing a stylesheet is not an easy task and requires buy-in from you and your team. We know. But we have found that stylesheet design vastly improves code maintainability and provides a consistent and reliable user experience.
designing-stylesheets.jpgimage/jpeg2015-06-30 18:56:17.7500042014-05-14 21:37:32.000000 are so critical. To discover who your customers are, think in terms of who will use the product and who feels the benefits of your products. Also, a customer might not even directly use your product, but they have a strong effect on your users. Consider an idea for building "Facebook" just for college students. There are the customers that create profiles and share, customers that purchase ads and universities that provide access to the students/customers to sign up. In this scenario, the ad purchasers are your customers that are your main revenue source. However, no one will buy ads if you can't get universities to join and open up your user base to additional students. Keep in your mind all of these customers and how they interact. Many times you need all these customer groups on board for an idea to succeed.Once you've identified these customers, it's time to find them and talk to them. Reach out to your personal network to find "experts" or typical users in each of the customer groups you've identified. Take the first group of customers you've met or talked with and see if they know more people that would be good to meet. Doing this a couple of times will give you a good picture of your customer base and who your users are.
After crafting the core message behind your idea and meeting with potential customers, hopefully a clear value proposition has come to light. Your value proposition is not just what your idea is, but rather what unique value it provides to customers that no one else offers right now. When someone hears about your idea, what about it makes them pumped to tell others? Don't feel that this value proposition is set in stone; it's the first version of many to come. As you move along in the idea lifecycle, your idea and value will evolve in accordance with customer feedback and knowledge gained from building out the idea.
With your value proposition in hand, it's time to think about building a simple prototype to test things out. What is the simplest way to test your value proposition to discover what are the best ways to implement your idea? If your idea's value proposition is to improve communication between job seekers and companies, what can you do at a minimum to test this? For example, can you act as the intermediary between both parties to manually improve communication before you build an expensive automated tool to do the same? If you can come up with a clever way to test your idea "manually" or with minimal technical capabilities, you'll learn so much valuable knowledge: how to most effectively automate your work and find the best workflow.
The point of starting small is not to second guess the validity of your idea. It is an opportunity to explore the in's and out's of your idea's implementation. Through this exploration you'll have the confidence to execute on your idea when you have the full resources to build. This confidence is based on experience from what you've learned from your customers and your own experiences "manually" implementing your idea.
We know this is a lot to take in and that's why we're here to help. We can help on any piece of this puzzle from the idea stage to customer research to building out your simple or fully-featured product. Everyone has different capabilities and requirements and that's why we're here. Come talk to us.
How to start on your idea?how-to-start-on-your-ideat2013-03-12 13:52:58.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.935000Now. Today. Tonight! Don't wait to start on your idea. You might say to yourself, well then I need to start building now and don't have the time/money so I can't proceed. While this might be true in some cases, for most, there is so much great and important work that can be done before you ever invest significant resources.2013-03-12 13:52:58.000000 ì e Ć8& Ă'MMAAqĂ=1!A AwebI was asked recently to join the Starter League JavaScript class as a TA. As a graduate of the Starter League Web Development program from a few years ago, I felt honored and validated to come back to the classroom as a teacher and "expert." While I certainly now know my way around JavaScript, I like everyone else have much to learn. This made me think, when can someone legitimately call himself or herself an expert?
TL;DR: Always and never
There are a lot of definitions for "expert web developer." All require a person to be constantly learning whether it is completing the 10,000 hour r 4% =--AA web
Testing pictures
Now. Today. Tonight!
Don't wait to start on your idea. You might say to yourself, well then I need to start building now and don't have the time/money so I can't proceed. While this might be true in some cases, for most, there is so much great and important work that can be done before you ever invest significant resources. Rather than worry about what you donât have, now is the time to get started with the resources you do have. Let's discuss how.
If you had a captive audience for just 2 minutes, what would you tell them about your idea? This exercise is meant to help you refine your idea to its key points. While you may have a long list of features for your product, you need to distill these down into their most elemental form. These key points are what a person who hears your idea for the first time needs to remember. After a couple rounds of going through this process, you'll arrive on your core idea.
Once you've fine-tuned your idea, now it's time to discuss your customers. Who are they? How do you find them? These questions sometime get lost in the shuffle of a new idea but 2 5ule or being a jQuery core team member. Web technology changes at a crazy fast pace. One day you're the top expert in the latest and greatest framework, the next you're a relic of the past.
To avoid this pitfall, expert web developers must constantly be sharpening their skills. Jakob Jenkov does a great job in outlining a path to expertise that developers must follow:
Simple - only four steps. The key is not the number of steps, but rather that these steps are part of a cyclical process. Step four leads right back into step one; always be learning, improving and sharing your knowledge.
Focused learning on a particular subject is a must to establish expertise. My focus is JavaScript - jQuery and AngularJS. In-depth knowledge of a particular subject is crucial to refining your expertise. However, expertise must be supplemented with a working knowledge of other areas. In my case, JavaScript's interaction with HTML and CSS necessitates understanding how each affects the other. Each language must be properly used for its intended purpose.
Putting your newly minted skills to the test by building is absolutely essential to your learning. My experiences building interfaces for trading platforms and healthcare applications, challenged what I knew and forced me to improve as new obstacles arose. Only by "Doing it" can you gain the confidence in your skills and knowledge as a developer.
With this confidence, start to give back to the community that provided so much guidance. StackOverflow and Google Groups are a great way to offer your thoughts and make the community better as whole. Identifying helpful resources will be key in teaching others and improving your own skills.
Being a teacher is not about having all the answers. You have to be able to troubleshoot a myriad of issues, recognize solution patterns and apply them in new instances. Teaching others is as much about helping others learn as it is about you being able to teach yourself.
Becoming a JavaScript TA has forced me to take my skills to the next level, making me a better overall developer and teacher. Being an "expert" in the classroom is not a validation of my current skills, but rather a challenge to strive to be better. The four steps above lay out the roadmap, it is up to the budding expert to follow them repeatedly. My story with JavaScript is still in its early stages. Teaching has accelerated my learning and shed light on how much there is yet to learn from so many talented peers in the field.
Time to get back to becoming an Expert. Thanks for reading.
Becoming an Expert Web Developerbecoming-an-expert-web-developert2014-06-03 02:46:18.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.949000http://cl.ly/image/1a0N3a311W3p/expert-web-dev.jpgI was asked recently to join the Starter League JavaScript class as a TA. As a graduate of the Starter League Web Development program from a few years ago, I felt honored and validated to come back to the classroom as a teacher and "expert." Whil e I certainly now know my way around JavaScript, I like everyone else have much to learn. This made me think, when can someone legitimately call himself or herself an expert?
TL;DR: Always and never
There are a lot of definitions for "expert web developer." All require a person to be constantly learning whether it is completing the 10,000 hour rule or being a jQuery core team member. Web technology changes at a crazy fast pace. One day you're the top expert in the latest and greatest framework, the next you're a relic of the past.
To avoid this pitfall, expert web developers must constantly be sharpening their skills. Jakob Jenkov does a great job in outlining a path to expertise that developers must follow:
Simple - only four steps. The key is not the number of steps, but rather that these steps are part of a cyclical process. Step four leads right back into step one; always be learning, improving and sharing your knowledge.
Focused learning on a particular subject is a must to establish expertise. My focus is JavaScript - jQuery and AngularJS. In-depth knowledge of a particular subject is crucial to refining your expertise. However, expertise must be supplemented with a working knowledge of other areas. In my case, JavaScript's interaction with HTML and CSS necessitates understanding how each affects the other. Each language must be properly used for its intended purpose.
Putting your newly minted skills to the test by building is absolutely essential to your learning. My experiences building interfaces for trading platforms and healthcare applications, challenged what I knew and forced me to improve as new obstacles arose. Only by "Doing it" can you gain the confidence in your skills and knowledge as a developer.
With this confidence, start to give back to the community that provided so much guidance. StackOverflow and Google Groups are a great way to offer your thoughts and make the community better as whole. Identifying helpful resources will be key in teaching others and improving your own skills.
Being a teacher is not about having all the answers. You have to be able to troubleshoot a myriad of issues, recognize solution patterns and apply them in new instances. Teaching others is as much about helping others learn as it is about you being able to teach yourself.
Becoming a JavaScript TA has forced me to take my skills to the next level, making me a better overall developer and teacher. Being an "expert" in the classroom is not a validation of my current skills, but rather a challenge to strive to be better. The four steps above lay out the roadmap, it is up to the budding expert to follow them repeatedly. My story with JavaScript is still in its early stages. Teaching has accelerated my learning and shed light on how much there is yet to learn from so many talented peers in the field.
Time to get back to becoming an Expert. Thanks for reading.
expert-web-dev.jpgimage/jpegÀ 2015-06-30 18:56:19.0659202014-06-03 02:46:18.000000 earn to code more than any other resource.Keep learning. Youâll never be âfinishedâ learning to code. You can always get better or learn something new. Rebuild your early apps, learn a new programming language, or pair program with a more experienced developer. Keep challenging yourself.
So go build something.
How to Learn to Programhow-to-learn-to-programt2013-03-26 03:13:29.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.956000A lot of people ask me how they can learn to program. Even if you donât see yourself becomming a full-time developer, I think everyone should [learn to code](http://www.code.org/). So, here's my roadmap for learning how to develop web applications with Ruby on Rails. **Have some app or idea you want to build in mind.** It doesn't have to be big or have a business idea behind it. Even a simple to-do list or project management app is ok, but the more passionate you are about the idea, the better, because that's what will [help you push through the hard parts](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2582-how-do-i-learn-to-program). **Learn some HTML & CSS.** You don't have to be an expert or memorize every rule. You should know enough to create an html page, style it, and open it in your web browser. You can learn everything you need to get started from [Shay Howeâs excellent tutorial](http://learn.shayhowe.com). Google Chrome's built in developer tools really help. Just right-click on any webpage and select "inspect element" to see the HTML & CSS. Once you start writing HTML & CSS, you'll want to get a good text editor. This is where you'll be doing all of your work (you can't use Microsoft Word). Textmate and Sublime Text are both very good. Try them both to see what you like. You're using a Mac, right? Don't attempt to learn modern web programming languages on a PC - it's not worth the pain. **Learn some Ruby.** You don't have to know every Ruby method to build your first web application with Rails, but you should know the basics. You can't put anything on the web with Ruby alone (you need Rails or something similar for that), but everything in Rails is written in Ruby, so you've got to know it. The best place to start is [Learn to Program by Chris Pine](http://amzn.com/1934356360). Make sure you buy the latest edition of this book. If you want to learn Ruby in a bit more detail, check out [Beginning Ruby by Peter Cooper](http://amzn.com/1430223634). You can also do [Try Ruby](http://tryruby.org/), which is a short interactive tutorial. If you get bored with the pure Ruby stuff, skip ahead to Rails. **Learn Rails.** The [Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl](http://ruby.railstutorial.org/) is fantastic. You can read it for free online, or buy the videos - it just depends how you would rather learn. The tutorial takes you from zero to building a clone of Twitter and covers awesome things like [Github](http://github.com), [Heroku](http://heroku.com), and testing along the way. If you can finish the tutorial and have an understanding of whatâs going on, you should be well on your way to programming your own apps. I started building small parts of the app that I had in mind while I did the Rails Tutorial, which helped me to apply what I was learning along the way. **Go to school.** If youâve made it this far, you probably want to get into programming full-time. There are some great coding schools that will help you bridge the gap between your self-taught skills and programming for a living. I strongly recommend [Starter Leagueâs](http://www.starterleague.com/) courses. Yes, as an alumni and mentor, Iâm a bit biased, but the the [Web Development](http://www.starterleague.com/webdev) course helped me learn to code more than any other resource. **Keep learning.** Youâll never be âfinishedâ learning to code. You can always get better or learn something new. Rebuild your early apps, learn a new programming language, or pair program with a more experienced developer. Keep challenging yourself. So go build something.2013-03-26 03:13:29.000000 ć ć Œ' œK;;AA žA AwebA lot of people ask me how they can learn to program. Even if you donât see yourself becomming a full-time developer, I think everyone should learn to code. So, here's my roadmap for learning how to develop web applications with Ruby on Rails.
Have some app or idea you want to build in mind. It doesn't have to be big or have a business idea behind it. Even a simple to-do list or project management app is ok, but the more passionate you are about the idea, the better, because that's what will help you push through the hard parts.
Learn some HTML & CSS. You don't have to be an expert or memorize every rule. You should know enough to create an html page, style it, and open it in your web browser. You can learn everything you need to get started from Shay Howeâs excellent tutorial. Google Chrome's built in developer tools really help. Just right-click on any webpage and select "inspect element" to see the HTML & CSS.
Once you start writing HTML & CSS, you'll want to get a good text editor. This is where you'll be doing all of your work (you can't use Microsoft Word). Textmate and Sublime Text are both very good. Try them both to see what you like. You're using a Mac, right? Don't attempt to learn modern web programming languages on a PC - it's not worth the pain.
Learn some Ruby. You don't have to know every Ruby method to build your first web application with Rails, but you should know the basics. You can't put anything on the web with Ruby alone (you need Rails or something similar for that), but everything in Rails is written in Ruby, so you've got to know it. The best place to start is Learn to Program by Chris Pine. Make sure you buy the latest edition of this book. If you want to learn Ruby in a bit more detail, check out Beginning Ruby by Peter Cooper. You can also do Try Ruby, which is a short interactive tutorial. If you get bored with the pure Ruby stuff, skip ahead to Rails.
Learn Rails. The Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl is fantastic. You can read it for free online, or buy the videos - it just depends how you would rather learn. The tutorial takes you from zero to building a clone of Twitter and covers awesome things like Github, Heroku, and testing along the way. If you can finish the tutorial and have an understanding of whatâs going on, you should be well on your way to programming your own apps. I started building small parts of the app that I had in mind while I did the Rails Tutorial, which helped me to apply what I was learning along the way.
Go to school. If youâve made it this far, you probably want to get into programming full-time. There are some great coding schools that will help you bridge the gap between your self-taught skills and programming for a living. I strongly recommend Starter Leagueâs courses. Yes, as an alumni and mentor, Iâm a bit biased, but the the Web Development course helped me l 6 c c ( m AA)!!A Abusiness
We're excited to announce that Sourcing Line has named LaunchPad Lab a leader in Chicago web design and development. Their research identifies top web designers, digital agencies, and mobile application developers in major US cities. For more information check out our Sourcing Line profile.
LaunchPad Lab Named Leader in Chicago Web Design and Developmentlaunchpad-lab-named-leader-in-chicago-web-design-and-developmentt2014-05-06 14:57:37.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.962000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/clutch.jpgWe're excited to announce that Sourcing Line has [named LaunchPad Lab](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/research-firm-sourcingline-publishes-analysis-of-leading-web-designers-and-mobile-application-developers-in-new-york-city-and-chicago-2014-05-06) a leader in Chicago web design and development. Their research identifies top web designers, digital agencies, and mobile application developers in major US cities. For more information check out our [Sourcing Line profile](https://www.sourcingline.com/profile/launchpad-lab).clutch.jpgimage/jpeg œ2015-06-30 18:56:20.1732162014-05-06 14:57:37.000000 ce: pre; word-spacing: normal; word-break: normal; line-height: 1.5; -moz-tab-size: 2; -o-tab-size: 2; tab-size: 2;"> @include keyframes(draw){ 0% {stroke-dashoffset: none; } 100% {stroke-dashoffset: 1; fill-opacity: 1;} }See the Pen CSS Animation with SVGs by Monique Marchwiany (@marchwiany) on CodePen.
Here's the full list of properties you can add to your animation, giving you plenty of control over how your animations are played.
animation: Allows multiple animation properties in a single style rule. Not all properties need to be used but must be specified in the following order: name duration timing-function delay iteration-count direction fill-mode play-state
animation-delay: How long the animation should wait before playing
animation-direction: The direction the animation plays
animation-duration: How long the animation should take to complete once
animation-fill-mode: The styles applied by the animation either before or after it plays
animation-iteration-count: How many times you want the animation to play before stopping
animation-name: The name of the keyframe
animation-play-state: Indicates if an animation is playing or paused
animation-timing-function: The speed curve of the animation
CSS animations work in most major browsers, but itâs always important to check and make sure your animations are working on the browsers you need it to. Check what W3Schools lists in terms of browser support for this property.
For those browsers that canât handle your awesome CSS animations, you have the option to include a png fallback to replace the SVG in those browsers by implementing SVGeezy (an easy-to-use JS plugin).
In the words of Spiderman's Uncle Ben "With great power, comes great responsibility." Animations can really add a nice touch to your website, but adding too many animations can distract from important content. When it comes to design and interactivity, itâs important to have a purpose for adding anything to a website or application. âBecause it looks coolâ isnât enough; rather, make sure it has meaning. Itâs always exciting learning new skills which makes it easy for us to get a little carried away sometimes. We're all guilty of it, but remember to take a step back to consider if it is significantly adding to the overall user experience. And when it does, animate away!
Rocket Animation: CSS Animations Using SVGsrocket-animation-css-animations-using-svgst2015-05-27 22:30:13.5610002015-06-05 20:39:35.980000Wondering how we did that rocket animation on our LaunchPad Lab site when you hover over the logo? Well we used a little something called CSS Animations. This is a great lightweight alternative to using javascript or dare I say...flash to create animations. âšlpl-logo.jpgimage/jpeg ·2015-06-30 18:56:21.4769732015-05-27 22:30:13.561000 K K œ*) # òecaAA %!A ADevelopmentWondering how we did that rocket animation on our LaunchPad Lab site when you hover over the logo? Well, we used a little something called CSS Animations. This is a great lightweight alternative to using javascript or dare I say...flash to create animations. âš
First youâll want to create the vector that you want to animate and export it as an SVG. You can then use SVGOMG to optimize your SVG by getting rid of any unnecessary lines of code that programs like Illustrator tend to include.
Single vs. Multiple Paths Tip: If you donât have a single path, each path will animate separately; if you want one continuous drawing, this is not ideal. However, if you do want paths to animate at different times, you can simply add classes within your SVG file and animation-delays in your CSS.
The HTML is relatively simple here, as you just need to embed the SVG in your HTML file. Unfortunately, if you just use the image tag the animation wonât work. An alternative we used was to put the SVG into a partial and simply render the partial on the HTML page.
You will also need to add a class in your svg tag. In our case we add the following:
class="logo-rocket"
There are two key CSS properties that we used to create this rocket animation: animation and @keyframes. The animation property does exactly what you'd think it doesâit animates your SVG. So in our rocket example "draw" is the name of the keyframe, "6.0s" is the duration of the animation, "linear" is speed, and "forwards" is the direction of the animation. Since the rocket is built as stroke in Illustrator, I need to use the stroke-dasharray and stroke-dashoffset properties which do the following:
stroke-dasharray: Creates dashed lines
stroke-dashoffset: Indicates where the dasharray starts
Basically, you set these two equal to each other so that you don't see dash marks. You need to make the number large enough to equal the length of your drawing (as if it were stretched out to a vertical line). Here's the animation styles we needed for the rocket animation:
.logo-rocket {
@include animation(draw 6.0s linear forwards);
@include animation-delay(-3.0s);
stroke-dasharray: 1800;
stroke-dashoffset: -1800;
}
Keyframes describe the progression of the animation, so it starts with the styles within 0% and by the end of the animation it will take on the styles listed within 100%. Here's the keyframe we needed for the rocket animation:
Signal Tower.
Scott tells his story and talks about some of the exciting stuff going on at LaunchPad Lab.
Check it out here: http://signaltower.co/2013/05/09/launch-pad-lab-co-founder-scott-weisman/
Launch Pad Lab co-founder Scott Weisman interviewed by Signal Towerlaunch-pad-lab-co-founder-scott-weisman-interviewed-by-signal-towert2013-05-12 02:05:31.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.988000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/signal-tower.jpgLaunchPad Lab CoFounder Scott was recently interviewed by [Signal Tower](http://signaltower.co/). Scott tells his story and talks about some of the exciting stuff going on at LaunchPad Lab. Check it out here: http://signaltower.co/scott-weisman/signal-tower.jpgimage/jpegA2015-06-30 18:56:23.9939212013-05-12 02:05:31.000000c* gMMAAkg!!A Aapp
Since all of our design and development happens on Macs, we're always looking to see what new technology Apple is working on. We had the keynote of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference streaming in our conference room yesterday.
Toward the end of the presentation Senior VP Craig Federighi said that "Objective-C has served us well for 20 years, But...â.
But? What?
Without even a word, our whole office was in the conference room to see what came next.
Apple introduced Swift, a new programming language that is simpler and more powerful than Objective-C. The best part of our job is that we get to learn new technologies all the time. As Swift improves over the next few years, we expect more and more developers to start to use it. We'll certainly give it a try.
When you're building an application, it's important to look at all the options and make an educated decision as to the one that will best help your business grow. Apple is betting that Swift's simplicity will help drive more developers to build apps for their platform. As developers, we think its a good bet and canât wait to see where it goes.
Apple iOS Development with Swiftapple-ios-development-with-swiftt2014-06-03 19:35:03.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.969000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/wwdc14.jpg
Since all of our design and development happens on Macs, we're always looking to see what new technology Apple is working on. We had the keynote of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference streaming in our conference room yesterday.
Toward the end of the presentation Senior VP Craig Federighi said that "Objective-C has served us well for 20 years, But...â.
But? What?
Without even a word, our whole office was in the conference room to see what came next.
Apple introduced Swift, a new programming language that is simpler and more powerful than Objective-C. The best part of our job is that we get to learn new technologies all the time. As Swift improves over the next few years, we expect more and more developers to start to use it. We'll certainly give it a try.
When you're building an application, it's important to look at all the options and make an educated decision as to the one that will best help your business grow. Apple is betting that Swift's simplicity will help drive more developers to build apps for their platform. As developers, we think its a good bet and canât wait to see where it goes.
wwdc14.jpgimage/jpeg2015-06-30 18:56:22.9111702014-06-03 19:35:03.000000 J Č AJ t. 31AA u businessFormer Apple Employee, Glenn Reid, recently wrote a great post on what it was really like to work with Steve Jobs. Reid explains why iteration was so important to Apple and Jobs.
I can still remember some of those early meetings, with 3 or 4 of us in a locked room somewhere on Apple campus, with a lot of whiteboards, talking about what iMovie should be (and should not be). It was as pure as pure gets, in terms of building software. Steve would draw a quick vision on the whiteboard, weâd go work on it for a while, bring it back, find out the ways in which it sucked, and weâd iterate, again and again and again. Thatâs how it always went. Iteration. Itâs the key to design, really. Just keep improving it until you have to ship it.
At LaunchPad Lab, we develop and design software in short iterations...
Iteration at Apple iteration-at-applef2013-01-26 00:17:54.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.008000Former Apple Employee, Glenn Reid, recently wrote a great post on [what it was really like to work with Steve Jobs](http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-like-working-with-steve-jobs.html). Reid explains why iteration was so important to Apple and Jobs.I can still remember some of those early meetings, with 3 or 4 of us in a locked room somewhere on Apple campus, with a lot of whiteboards, talking about what iMovie should be (and should not be). It was as pure as pure gets, in terms of building software. Steve would draw a quick vision on the whiteboard, weâd go work on it for a while, bring it back, find out the ways in which it sucked, and weâd iterate, again and again and again. Thatâs how it always went. Iteration. Itâs the key to design, really. Just keep improving it until you have to ship it.At LaunchPad Lab, we develop and design software in short iterations...o- 33AA Users over Featuresusers-over-featuresf2015-05-28 14:12:11.1230002015-06-05 20:38:01.759000K, UKKAA )!A Abackend
Our very own Tom Cullen made another appearance on our favorite show "Bootstrapping in America" on Tasty Trade. See him discuss the future of electronic trading and how LaunchPad Lab is part of the exciting cross-section of trading and technology.
See LaunchPad Lab on TastyTradesee-launchpad-lab-on-tastytradet2013-09-20 04:20:32.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.974000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/tastytrade.jpgOur very own Tom Cullen made another appearance on our favorite show "Bootstrapping in America" on [Tasty Trade](http://tastytrade.com/). See him discuss the future of electronic trading and how LaunchPad Lab is part of the exciting cross-section of trading and technology. tastytrade.jpgimage/jpeg,Y2015-06-30 18:56:24.8551942013-09-20 04:20:32.000000 e to deploy my own live website from scratch, I felt a strange sense of relief. Some of the familiar terms I heard bounced around in the office now clicked. Simple analogies helped me understand the work on our projects. For example, I was taught that HTML is the skeleton and CSS is the clothes, which worked because I could use what I knew in my everyday life to help me through what I didnât on my screen.The most enlightening moment was learning to properly link content; it was an âahaâ moment because I learned that different sheets and languages could communicate with each other. I learned this needed to happen in the brains of the code, "head." My fingers flew across the keyboard as I learned basic coding shortcuts separate from my familiar word processing programs (shift+command+d copies and pastes the above line, command bracket allows you to indent, etc.).
Afterwards, Ryan and Kurt explained the difficulty yet importance of teaching novices from an expert perspective. I realized that even though learning code may have been temporarily challenging for me while I absorbed new terms and logic, teaching code as an expert to beginners is a much deeper challenge. While I briefly built up, they had to endlessly breakdown. The difference between element, ID, and class selectors may be second nature for them; however revisiting the fundamentals helps facilitate better practice.
By no means would I consider myself to know code; I am still leaps and bounds behind the complexity of the work being done by my co-workers. However, that brief initial workshop gave me crucial takeaways about coding and web development. Ryan and Kurt made it clear that learning code would not come from a syllabus, textbook, or exams (as I was accustomed to), but rather incessant questions. They stressed that it was impossible to master coding after one session.
Furthermore, an intro to coding class accomplished one major thing for me: it gave me context. Whenever I would ask my friends who knew how to code to explain, they would always start by saying, âWell, itâs a languageâŠâ I didnât realize how HTML/CSS could be a language like Spanish or English, read by a browser, until my introduction. That language gives me a foundation of context to try to keep up and learn.
Simply put, there are 2 types of people: those who donât know code (me) and those who do know code. To those in my group, whether you are a college student working at a web development studio for the summer or not, try to learn! Mastering a few key tags, elements, and syntax rules can go a long way in establishing a foundation. To those in the other group, whether you work at a web development studio or not, try to teach! It can refresh your expert perspective, and people like me will need your continued help!
So letâs give it a shot, but just remember, Iâve still got more to learn:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<div class=âcoding practiceâ>
<ul class=âtakeawaysâ>
<li>its invigorating to feel lost</li>
<li>its more invigorating to feel finding something new</li>
<li>ask questions and seek out context</li>
<li>observe</li>
<li>try</li>
</ul>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I have been learning my whole life. As a current undergraduate student studying Economics and Government, my daily task is to learn as much as possible. During my first two weeks at LaunchPad Lab, I have certainly learned something: how much more there still is to learn. However, I have also quickly learned that this is an actionable realization. Though this may appear to be a familiar tale, nothing says âmore to learnâ like working as a business intern in a web development studio with minimal prior coding knowledge.
Let me explain. The office environment was extremely welcoming to me when I began; I was particularly struck by the camaraderie. It was obvious that the goal is not simply to work but to work together, a significant deviation from what college can offer at times, where the environment can be competitive and self-focused. For instance, during the companyâs Demo Day last week, individual innovation on blogs, apps, ideas and coding was highlighted while collaboration on individual skills, tasks, or problems was stressed as altogether crucial to complete a task.
But one thing that supportiveness and camaraderie canât do alone is teach code. As I worked through my first week and observed with both my eyes and ears open, I was simultaneously impressed and overwhelmed with the web and mobile development. As hard as I tried, I quickly understood that I could not simply learn code by osmosis. Regardless of my listening and note-taking skills on the intricacies of Ruby on Rails, proper syntax, or how to nest "div"s, I couldnât master the intimidating jargon. As opposed to a typical college class, rote memorization, practice problems, exams, and sheer brainpower were moot here.
Until I learned to code (Iâm using âlearn to codeâ incredibly loosely).
I was lucky to attend an intro to HTML/CSS coding workshop at the Starter League, taught by two of my LaunchPad Lab colleagues, Ryan Francis and Kurt Cunningham. Over the course of the 3 hours, I was tested, excited, intrigued, and enveloped by the new world of code. By the end of the session, when I was abl = ` ` 0 }IEAA Abusiness
Last Saturday I had the pleasure of speaking at the Glapitnova discussion festival. They had an amazing group of speakers who included professional and world champion athletes, award-winning musicians, successful business owners and entrepreneurs at four different locations on Milwaukee Avenue. I was honored to be a part of it.
My talk was about taking your idea and making it real.
Too many people have great ideas but don't know how to execute them. Many times either their ideas do not come to fruition or someone else with the necessary knowledge base is first to market. LaunchPad Lab is out to change that and level the playing field. My talk explained the road map that we use as we design and build your idea.
That design process is a large part of what we do at LaunchPad Lab and our client's see it as one of the most valuable parts of working with us. We take the time to understand their business and what their ideas really entail. We use this knowledge to design applications that will connect with their users and ensure the success of the business.
Every great idea needs great execution. Developing that idea into a successful web business is where we thrive.
Many thanks to Glappitnova for putting on such an inspiring event. There was a lot to take away from all the speakers and I can't wait until the next one.
(This article was also posted on Built in Chicago: http://www.builtinchicago.org/blog/inspiration-glappitnova)
Inspiration from Glappitnova.inspiration-from-glappitnovat2013-03-06 18:26:23.0000002015-06-05 20:39:35.995000Last Saturday I had the pleasure of speaking at the Glapitnova discussion festival. They had an amazing group of speakers who included professional and world champion athletes, award-winning musicians, successful business owners and entrepreneurs at four different locations on Milwaukee Avenue. I was honored to be a part of it. My talk was about taking your idea and making it real. Too many people have great ideas but don't know how to execute them. Many times either their ideas do not come to fruition or someone else with the necessary knowledge base is first to market. LaunchPad Lab is out to change that and level the playing field. My talk explained the road map that we use as we design and build your idea. That design process is a large part of what we do at LaunchPad Lab and our client's see it as one of the most valuable parts of working with us. We take the time to understand their business and what their ideas really entail. We use this knowledge to design applications that will connect with their users and ensure the success of the business. Every great idea needs great execution. Developing that idea into a successful web business is where we thrive. Many thanks to Glappitnova for putting on such an inspiring event. There was a lot to take away from all the speakers and I can't wait until the next one. (This article was also posted on Built in Chicago: http://www.builtinchicago.org/blog/inspiration-glappitnova)2013-03-06 18:26:23.000000 Store to introduce LandID to the world. Here's a couple of quick screenshots of the inner-workings of the app:
So where are we now? This app is just getting started. As more users download the app, we're delivering impactful tools to our client to market and grow downloads and posts for LandID. The success we've seen early-on testifies to our mutual partnership with our client.
LandID is still in its early stages with a lot of potential to be realized in the new year. Seeing our clients succeed is why we do this.
We are excited to build upon our success with LandID by applying our sharpened skills to your idea. Reach out to us and let's get started. Will you be the next success story?
Meet our latest success story: LandIDmeet-our-latest-success-story-landidt2014-01-12 19:48:18.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.001000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/landid.jpgHere at [LaunchPad Lab](http://launchpadlab.com/) we've thawed out from ChiBeria, filled with excitement about the future. As we look forward to many new opportunities to help you, we're showcasing one of our latest successful clients that we partnered with to build a product and grow their business. In 2013, we teamed up with another great client to build an iPhone app called [LandID](http://landidapp.com/). LandID is a mobile platform designed to capture the images and stories of physical locations that shape your life. When we kicked off this project, our team of developers and designers focused on defining the product's core essence. Our product discovery evolved through a review of existing photo apps and blogging platforms to find our unique message to shape and craft this product. At the core, this product aims to truly capture the meaningful moments of your life. Using geo-coordinates, timestamps and pictures, we can create a digital time capsule of a moment in your life. With this clear product objective in hand, the path to product development and launch proved more focused. We established our branding and style for the product through an identity package of logos, style guides and clickable prototypes. Interactions and navigation throughout an iPhone app are critical. We used [Flinto](http://flinto.com/) to rapidly iterate and fine tune our design and product flow. In conjunction with the design, our developers brought this native iPhone app to life. [TestFlight](https://testflightapp.com/) proved crucial for us to showcase the app to a group of beta testers to ensure the product stayed true to its objective. At the end of the development cycle, we pushed the app live to the App Store to introduce LandID to the world. Here's a couple of quick screenshots of the inner-workings of the app:
So where are we now? This app is just getting started. As more users download the app, we're delivering impactful tools to our client to market and grow downloads and posts for LandID. The success we've seen early-on testifies to our mutual partnership with our client.
LandID is still in its early stages with a lot of potential to be realized in the new year. Seeing our clients succeed is why we do this.
We are excited to build upon our success with LandID by applying our sharpened skills to your idea. Reach out to [us](mailto:contact@launchpadlab.com) and let's get started. Will you be the next success story?landid.jpgimage/jpeg/Ű2015-06-30 18:56:26.3619412014-01-12 19:48:18.000000
Ç Ç ź.1 WUAA«!!A AbusinessHere at LaunchPad Lab we've thawed out from ChiBeria, filled with excitement about the future. As we look forward to many new opportunities to help you, we're showcasing one of our latest successful clients that we partnered with to build a product and grow their business.
In 2013, we teamed up with another great client to build an iPhone app called LandID. LandID is a mobile platform designed to capture the images and stories of physical locations that shape your life.
When we kicked off this project, our team of developers and designers focused on defining the product's core essence. Our product discovery evolved through a review of existing photo apps and blogging platforms to find our unique message to shape and craft this product. At the core, this product aims to truly capture the meaningful moments of your life. Using geo-coordinates, timestamps and pictures, we can create a digital time capsule of a moment in your life.
With this clear product objective in hand, the path to product development and launch proved more focused. We established our branding and style for the product through an identity package of logos, style guides and clickable prototypes. Interactions and navigation throughout an iPhone app are critical. We used Flinto to rapidly iterate and fine tune our design and product flow.
In conjunction with the design, our developers brought this native iPhone app to life. TestFlight proved crucial for us to showcase the app to a group of beta testers to ensure the product stayed true to its objective. At the end of the development cycle, we pushed the app live to the App @ % % X2 CkgAA '!A Abusiness
Our client, CancerIQ took top honors this past weekend, winning $100,000 in the Global Challenge Cup. We partnered with their team to build the prototype of their clinical oncology software. Success at LaunchPad Lab is measured by our client's success. Congratulations to the CancerIQ team!
Based in Chicago, Cancer IQ allows oncologists to collect genetic information from cancer patients and compare that information against a large database of similar patients. The goal is to identify high-risk patients and offer preventative treatment.
CancerIQ wins Global Challenge Cup (Healthcare)canceriq-wins-global-challenge-cup-healthcaret2014-05-19 14:50:01.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.041000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/cancer-iq.jpgOur client, CancerIQ took top honors this past weekend, winning $100,000 in the Global Challenge Cup. We partnered with their team to build the prototype of their clinical oncology software. Success at LaunchPad Lab is measured by our client's success. Congratulations to the CancerIQ team!
Based in Chicago, Cancer IQ allows oncologists to collect genetic information from cancer patients and compare that information against a large database of similar patients. The goal is to identify high-risk patients and offer preventative treatment.
cancer-iq.jpgimage/jpeg#Ż2015-06-30 18:56:27.4087922014-05-19 14:50:01.000000 ~ n~ n4 ))AAqs1!A AbusinessThe LaunchPad Lab partners recently met up for dinner and a few drinks.
We talked about how crucial our apprenticeship program has been and will be to our continued success. The Starter League in particular has been amazing for our business. All but two of us have taken classes there. What makes Starter League alumni fit so well with our team? Let's take a look at what we look for in a new candida D3 AOKAA#1!A Abusiness
The Brewerâs Barrel (http://thebrewersbarrel.com) is the best place on the internet for brewing recipes.
At LaunchPad Lab, we love beer. It is part of our culture and we have a refrigerator full of unique beers that we usually break out on Friday afternoons. Not only do we like tasting them, we also really enjoy brewing them. As we looked online for great recipes to brew, they were really hard to find. There are message boards, blogs and brewing stores, but none of those had an easy way to find the recipes we were looking for.
So as a side project, we skipped a few beer tastings and built what we think is the best place to find great beer recipes and learn how to brew them. (Ok maybe we didn't skip any tastings... It's amazing how thirsty building a brewing application made us!) We made it easy to add recipes to our âTo Brew Listâ, brew a batch, and get feedback on our brew.
We have been using it and we love it so much that we knew we had to share it with the brewing community.
So check out at http://thebrewersbarrel.com. We hope you like it as much as we do.
Looking ahead, we have some cool ideas for whatâs next even including an iPhone app.
Happy Brewing!
Introducing The Brewerâs Barrelintroducing-the-brewer-s-barrelt2013-04-15 19:03:28.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.036000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/brewers-barrel.jpgThe Brewerâs Barrel ([http://thebrewersbarrel.com](http://thebrewersbarrel.com)) is the best place on the internet for brewing recipes. At [LaunchPad Lab](http://launchpadlab.com), we love beer. It is part of our culture and we have a refrigerator full of unique beers that we usually break out on Friday afternoons. Not only do we like tasting them, we also really enjoy brewing them. As we looked online for great recipes to brew, they were really hard to find. There are message boards, blogs and brewing stores, but none of those had an easy way to find the recipes we were looking for. So as a side project, we skipped a few beer tastings and built what we think is the best place to find great beer recipes and learn how to brew them. (Ok maybe we didn't skip any tastings... It's amazing how thirsty building a brewing application made us!) We made it easy to add recipes to our âTo Brew Listâ, brew a batch, and get feedback on our brew. We have been using it and we love it so much that we knew we had to share it with the brewing community. So check out at [http://thebrewersbarrel.com](http://thebrewersbarrel.com). We hope you like it as much as we do. Looking ahead, we have some cool ideas for whatâs next even including an iPhone app. Happy Brewing!brewers-barrel.jpgimage/jpegYÜ2015-06-30 18:56:28.3596252013-04-15 19:03:28.000000 te:The Starter League has done a great job attracting and teaching students who fit our demanding requirements. It is because of this the alumni have a special bond that few other schools can claim.
Toward the end of our meal, our waiter delivered this note from someone who had sat at the bar and already left.
What a nice surprise! They went out of their way to tell us to keep up the good work and didn't even stick around to accept a thank you. So: Thank You! You are the reason that we love this community. You inspire us to work harder every day.
It's time to pay it forward.
Pay it Forwardpay-it-forwardt2014-07-30 15:33:26.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.047000http://cl.ly/image/2D2C2f0j3o1v/pay-it-forward.jpgThe LaunchPad Lab partners recently met up for dinner and a few drinks.
We talked about how crucial our apprenticeship program has been and will be to our continued success. The Starter League in particular has been amazing for our business. All but two of us have taken classes there. What makes Starter League alumni fit so well with our team? Let's take a look at what we look for in a new candidate:
The Starter League has done a great job attracting and teaching students who fit our demanding requirements. It is because of this the alumni have a special bond that few other schools can claim.
Toward the end of our meal, our waiter delivered this note from someone who had sat at the bar and already left.
What a nice surprise! They went out of their way to tell us to keep up the good work and didn't even stick around to accept a thank you. So: Thank You! You are the reason that we love this community. You inspire us to work harder every day.
It's time to pay it forward.
pay-it-forward.jpgimage/jpegAÖ2015-06-30 18:56:29.3760422014-07-30 15:33:26.000000 mobile designAt LaunchPad Lab, we have a fun, but focused culture, deeply rooted in learning. We value shipping products and always striving to be better. If you value these things too, please send us your resume and a link to your online portfolio to contact@launchpadlab.com
No Recruiters.
We're looking for a web designerwe-re-looking-for-a-web-designert2014-04-30 16:36:59.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.060000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/looking-for-web-dev.jpgFueled by a team of passionate and driven entrepreneurs, LaunchPad Lab is a Chicago-based Development Studio that focuses on growing businesses. We are intentionally small, skilled and focused on success. We build our own businesses while helping others build theirs. No matter the size of the client, we approach all projects the same: design with reason, find business solutions and impress users with the best experience possible.
We work in a collaborative environment where everyone is expected to be creative and contribute to all facets of building businesses. Each day at LaunchPad Lab is an opportunity to work with a team focused on making a difference. We intentionally choose tough projects that have the potential to change the world. Those projects include helping cancer researchers discover cures faster (Really!) as well as revolutionizing business payments.
You are a designer who focuses on the details and strives to build a more meaningful experience for your users. You thrive on collaboration, understand the process of iteration and prefer to âownâ a project from inception to deployment. You are a designer who has experience designing user interfaces, marketing sites and performing brand development. Most of all, you want to be part of a fun, challenging and collaborative environment where egos are left at the door.
At LaunchPad Lab, we have a fun, but focused culture, deeply rooted in learning. We value shipping products and always striving to be better. If you value these things too, please send us your resume and a link to your online portfolio to contact@launchpadlab.com
No Recruiters.
looking-for-web-dev.jpgimage/jpeg[v2015-06-30 18:56:30.5946582014-04-30 16:36:59.000000 Źr5 «MMAAȘ!;!A Aweb
Fueled by a team of passionate and driven entrepreneurs, LaunchPad Lab is a Chicago-based Development Studio that focuses on growing businesses. We are intentionally small, skilled and focused on success. We build our own businesses while helping others build theirs. No matter the size of the client, we approach all projects the same: design with reason, find business solutions and impress users with the best experience possible.
We work in a collaborative environment where everyone is expected to be creative and contribute to all facets of building businesses. Each day at LaunchPad Lab is an opportunity to work with a team focused on making a difference. We intentionally choose tough projects that have the potential to change the world. Those projects include helping cancer researchers discover cures faster (Really!) as well as revolutionizing business payments.
You are a designer who focuses on the details and strives to build a more meaningful experience for your users. You thrive on collaboration, understand the process of iteration and prefer to âownâ a project from inception to deployment. You are a designer who has experience designing user interfaces, marketing sites and performing brand development. Most of all, you want to be part of a fun, challenging and collaborative environment where egos are left at the door.
On a brick wall in our office hang a series of posters highlighting the values core to our work at LaunchPad. One of my favorites is Code for Change.
What does this mean to us? Two things:
How well your code adapts to change is what separates good coders from great ones. Is your code difficult and time-consuming to update in response to new or altered product requirements? Hopefully not.
There is a saying amongst coders that goes something like:
You'll never know less about the problem you are trying to solve than right now.
With this harsh reality, anticipating change and building your codebase accordingly is the hallmark of great development.
Automated tests, APIs, and services are some of the tools we use to help us be more effective at managing change. It is a constant challenge for us to improve how we use these tools. In this way, we can be the most agile and proactive to application change and scaling.
We tend to think of ourselves as entrepreneurial coders. To us, this means building applications and products that make a difference in the real world. Whatever problem an application attempts to solve, we challenge ourselves to develop code that drives an impactful solution.
It is not enough just to write beautiful, object-oriented, and well-tested code. What we build must have an impact. In this way, our code becomes a living and breathing entity, adept at responding to changes in its environment. I use this biology metaphor to emphasize how the products we build grow and evolve to meet the challenges and demands of its surroundings - in this case, users.
While short and concise at only 3 words, Code for Change in action ensures what we build gets better to provide even more value to businesses and ultimately their customers.
Code for changecode-for-changet2015-05-27 18:47:07.6140002015-06-05 20:39:36.066000On a brick wall in our office hang a series of posters highlighting the values core to our work at LaunchPad. One of my favorites is "Code for Change."code-for-change.jpgimage/jpegE 2015-06-30 18:56:31.7781082015-05-27 18:47:07.614000 . . O7 c AA }%!A AwebAt LaunchPad Lab, when we're not working on impactful projects such as helping folks with Macular Degeneration or lending a hand in the fight for a cure, we like to let loose and work on some fun side projects. Fortunately, we have periodic Demo Days where we get to present our experiments to the group, get feedback, and support each other's interests.
For our most recent Demo Day, I decided to focus on improving something I love: playing pick-up basketball.
After years of playing in cities all over the country, it's become clear to me that organizing pick-up games is more art than science. Whether the next team is determined on a first-come-first-serve basis, by trying to equalize everyone's playing-time, or anything and everything in between, pick-up games still require a lot of manual organization. This has negatively impacted my playing-time, fun, and much-needed exercise.
OpenGym is a mobile and tablet application that eases the pain of managing a pick-up game by automatically selecting the next team using whichever method you want. It also allows players to check-in remotely, tracks individual win-loss records and can be used to communicate between players and whoever is in charge of organizing the game.
While OpenGym won't make me 10 years younger or fix my jumpshot, it does make playing pick-up just a little more fun, no matter the sport or the player!
So join me on the hardwood or come by our office and lets chat about how we can help you make an impact.
Got next?got-nextt2015-06-03 21:09:52.8180002015-06-08 18:41:41.003000http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/uploaded_images/ballsofury.jpgAt LaunchPad Lab, when we're not working on impactful projects such as helping folks with [Macular Degeneration](http://guideme.preventblindness.org/) and lending a hand in the [fight for a cure](http://launchpadlab.com/work/md_anderson), we like to let loose and work on some fun projects as well. Fortunately, we have periodic Demo Days where we get to present side projects to the group, get feedback, and support each other's interests.open-gym.jpgimage/jpegț2015-06-30 18:56:32.8722902015-06-03 21:09:52.818000 4 4 `9 AiiAA AbackendHere's a slide show on how to stay up to date on the latest web technology and trends. The most useful part is a list of websites and Twitter handles to follow. These can be found on the "Boss" slides (about three-quarters the way through the slide deck.)
Enjoy!
https://speakerdeck.com/chriscoyier/how-to-stay-up-to-date-on-web-technology
Brewers Barrel was recently in Crain's Chicago Business "New in Chicago" section. Here is what they had to say.
The Brewer's Barrel: Launched in April, this website gives amateur and professional beer brewers a place to find and share recipes, vote for their favorites, keep track of recipes they use and order brewing ingredients. The site was created by Brendan Hennessy, Tom Cullen and Scott Weisman, partners at Chicago Web development firm LaunchPad Lab , which was founded in July 2012. The three also are avid members of the home-brewing community. âWe love being a part of it and wanted to contribute by creating this online community,â Mr. Hennessy says in a press release. LaunchPad Lab created the site in partnership with Brew Camp, a Chicago-based brewing supply store that ships nationwide.
See the whole article here: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130430/NEWS07/130439977/nutrition-bars-rustic-pies-intelligentsia-teas-and-more#ixzz2TBTVfcL7
The Brewers Barrel in Crainsthe-brewers-barrel-in-crainst2013-05-13 14:46:44.0000002015-06-05 20:39:36.100000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/brewers-barrel.jpgBrewers Barrel was recently in Crain's Chicago Business "New in Chicago" section. Here is what they had to say. >[The Brewer's Barrel](http://thebrewersbarrel.com/): Launched in April, this website gives amateur and professional beer brewers a place to find and share recipes, vote for their favorites, keep track of recipes they use and order brewing ingredients. The site was created by Brendan Hennessy, Tom Cullen and Scott Weisman, partners at Chicago Web development firm [LaunchPad Lab](http://launchpadlab.com/) , which was founded in July 2012. The three also are avid members of the home-brewing community. âWe love being a part of it and wanted to contribute by creating this online community,â Mr. Hennessy says in a press release. LaunchPad Lab created the site in partnership with [Brew Camp](https://brewcamp.com/), a Chicago-based brewing supply store that ships nationwide. See the whole article here: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130430/NEWS07/130439977/nutrition-bars-rustic-pies-intelligentsia-teas-and-more#ixzz2TBTVfcL7 brewers-barrel.jpgimage/jpegYÜ2015-06-30 18:56:34.7589302013-05-13 14:46:44.000000 ° ° W; s;;AAM!!A AwebFrom the first moment we met Tricia, we knew we had to work with her. Her passion and drive to bring change to women in need is contagious, and creating impact is what we're all about here at LaunchPad.
Tricia is the brains behind shiftwomen.com, a crowdfunding platform that raises money for impoverished women. Shift focuses on helping women in third world countries who live off of less than $1 a day. Tricia and her team raise money for these communities of women and send them direct cash transfers, but the impact doesn't end there. Shift also provides financial education to help these women build sustainable enterprises and bring stability to their families. As you can guess, this can truly change the lives of these women and their communities.
Of course since Shift is focused on helping women, it made sense for Monique and Katie on our team to lead this project.
While building the site, we wanted to create a personal connection between the donors and the recipients of Shift Women. We designed it to focus on individual communities and specific women within these communities. Their stories give donors a glimpse into the lives of the women they're helping. Outlining the stages of the Shift process was also a big focus of ours, so that donors could see the actual progress within each affected community as the donations are put to use.
Dig deeper into our work with Tricia and Shift here! http://launchpadlab.com/work/shift
Shifting into high gearshifting-into-high-geart2015-01-15 19:46:50.1970002015-06-05 20:39:36.078000https://s3.amazonaws.com/lpl_general/blog_images/shift2.jpgMillions of women around the world are stuck in the lowest level of poverty living on less than a dollar a day. Shift your giving to the women who need it most.shift2.jpgimage/jpeg _2015-06-30 18:56:36.5233932015-01-15 19:46:50.197000s: MIIAA !!A Awebhttp://www.jstreettech.com/how-to-choose.aspx
http://moveableonline.com/blog/2015/04/03/how-to-pick-a-designer-developer-for-your-app/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226270
How to Pick a Development Firmhow-to-pick-a-development-firmf2015-06-03 22:00:02.0510002015-06-05 21:20:02.668000lights.jpgimage/jpeg{Ă2015-06-30 18:56:35.6388932015-06-05 00:00:00.000000 ]< 55AA #9!A ACodingAs a developer, I feel great pride in mastering my keyboard. Like a musician and his guitar, the keyboard is my instrument, and playing it brings me immense joy and inspiration. (I know, dramatic right?)
Like any instrument, the first step toward mastery is learning proper technique and practicing it. For a developer, that means learning and using keyboard shortcuts for the tools we use the most; Sublime Text, Chrome, and Gmail.
I've taken some time to create Github Gists for each of these tools with the shortcuts that will get you 90% of the way there. Note that these shortcuts are for Mac.
Master Your Keyboardmaster-your-keyboardt2015-04-24 19:50:39.7780002015-06-05 20:39:36.124000As a developer, I feel great pride in mastering my keyboard. Like a musician and his guitar, the keyboard is my instrument, and playing it brings me immense joy and inspiration. (I know, dramatic right?)keyboard-shortcuts.jpgimage/jpeg+P2015-06-30 18:56:37.5586992015-04-24 19:50:39.778000 t t = OOAA AG!A AHere's our weekly recap about new posts, articles we're reading, and interesting things we find across the web.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/05/26/mobile-isnt-killing-the-desktop-internet/
The growth in mobile use isnât to the detriment of desktop. Mobile is growing to 50% use, but that doesn't mean that people spend less time on desktops, they are just spending more time over all. They are doubling their time on all computer devices. So many implications!
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/20/8602499/melinda-gates-user-centered-design#b05g26t20w15
We focus on user-centered design in all the projects we build. The basic premise, the article explains, is that people shouldn't have to adjust their behavior to products. The products should fit into the behavior or the people. User-centered design has a large monetary and social impact on the companies that we work with and this article shows how important it is to global health.
Interest rates have stayed low as the economy continues to grow. As investor money continues to flow into alternative investments such as VC firms, are the VC firms themselves ripe for disruption?
http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/
Dating apps are an important category in the web/mobile world. The important challenge with these businesses is that if you are successful for your customer, they donât need you any more (churn). Andrew Chen does a great job explaining it in this article. Dating app or not, it's important to know if your business has built-in churn and to create a game plan for it.
Our CTO, Brendan, wrote about how to Code for Change and one of our amazing designers, Monique, shows in detail how she made our animated logo.
Have a great weekend!
Weekly Reading from LaunchPad Labweekly-reading-from-launchpad-labt2015-05-29 10:46:17.5190002015-06-05 20:39:36.130000Our weekly recap with new posts, articles, and interesting things we find across the web. mongodb-intro-opt__281_29.jpgimage/jpeg@_2015-06-30 18:56:38.5670252015-05-29 10:46:17.519000
