What is so great about 30th of May? Is it because of that summer is coming? No, it is because of that is birthday of Chris!

It is a really great day, and I on behalf of all developers on staff would like to congratulate you with that great once a year holiday!

Time to take a pause, meet the family and friends! Please say “hi” to everybody and have a great time today from early morning to evening!

Happy birthday, Christopher!!! What a great day for all of us that you’ve been born!

Have a great time!

Oleg, Alex, Timur, Rustem, Ravil, Evgeniy, Dilyara.

Blake and I had a meeting today about siteMighty.  We both feel a newfound seriousness about siteMighty that we haven’t felt previously on Huckabuck or other ideas.  siteMighty has made the leap from project to company, and in this success has taken on a life of its own. 

As it does this, it grows bigger than us, and though we are still responsible for siteMighty, we are no longer in full control of it.  Its growth is spurred by our users, our partners, and the community that is developing around it.  I was very touched by the positive comments we received on our post on KillerStartups this week, and they represented to me our users/community getting out of siteMighty exactly what we have envisioned and hoped for.  Read the comments here (thanks to our supportive community). We are building a tool that puts people in business for themselves. Yeah!

We are no longer in complete control, we now are dedicated stewards of siteMighty.  We are embolden and invigorated.  We’re out to conquer the world!

For those of you who don’t know, our offices are located in New Orleans. Far from the fervor of Silicon Valley or the pace of NYC, being a technology/Internet company in the deep south has it’s own set of challenges and rewards. One of the perks is getting the chance to work with people like the team at iCommissions.com.

We’ve been active in the affiliate marketing space for years, and have worked with iCommissions for a while now. When we made up our minds to start building siteMighty, we introduced the idea to iCommissions and without pause they committed to step up and help us any way they could.

Inviting their users to try and test siteMighty has proved to be invaluable as we learned (and continue to learn) a great deal about siteMighty from the user’s perspective. They told us what was working and what wasn’t which is exactly what we needed – honest, genuine feedback. Many of the features you see on siteMighty today have been tweaked, polished or suggested by an iCommission’s user.

iCommissions is located in Mandeville which is on the Northshore just across Lake Pontchartrain from us. We try to get up there as often as we can to talk about siteMighty, have lunch and drink in the crisp, lake front breeze.

We thought we’d post some pics from our last visit so you can get to know our good friends at iCommissions.com.

(Pictured: Natalie Yarbrough and Scot Rumsey of iCommissions.com)

We’ve now been blogging at VoodooVentures.com for just over six months, and we felt like it was time to check in and assess the state of our blog. It’s been a lot of fun sharing our thoughts with you on a daily and weekly basis. As things have progressed, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and you, our readers, and we are excited to continue to improve moving forward.

First let’s start with some stats:

• 129 posts – an average of 1 post every 1.7 days
• 90 Comments – the most comments was 12 on the Shopping 2.0 Smackdown post
• 40 community members from MyBlogLog
• 9739 visits and 21447 pageviews from Google Analytics data
• We have 35 subscribers through FeedBurner and the truth is we don’t know how many through our natural feed
• Our Alexa Rank is 213,851 and has been as high as 90,000

The most popular posts have been:

• My Top 10 Wows About Zappos – 1/29/07
• Do You Smile Over the Phone? Zappos Does – 1/26/07
• Basecamp vs. Dropsend Valuation Smackdown - 11/27/06
  
• Shopping 2.0 Smackdown: Shopping Engines Compared – 12/8/06
  
• Live Collaboration Nirvana = Skype + Yugma – 3/1/07

The least popular posts were:

• What’s Wal-Mart Up To? – 2/6/07
• Dropping Vowels is So 5 Minutes Ago. Am I in 3.0? – 11/3/06
• EO: Accelerating the Entreprenuer – 11/3/06
• Update: siteMighty Beta Testing – 12/7/06
• Transparent is the New Opaque with Quigo – 2/26/07

Finally, shout outs to our biggest readers and commenters:

• Blake Poutra
• Gerard Ramos
• Chris Daigle
• Scott Carpenter
• Scott Schroeder
• Brian Oberkirch

In digesting all of this, some trends start to arise. We see that some of the topics on which we think we were breaking news should be left to the journalists, and that we should instead shoot for posts in which we have a unique perspective or an authoritative review. In other words, do we really have something to contribute to the conversation?

Later this week we’ll be posting about our plans going forward. While changes to our blogging will be incremental, we hope that they will continue to improve the quality of our content and engage our readers more effectively.

Here’s a preview of the questions we are asking ourselves:

• Do I have a unique perspective with value to add or am I bouncing around the echo chamber of the blogosphere?
• How does this forward our strategic goals as a company?
• Would I gain something from this post if I read it elsewhere?

We also want to hear from you, our readers. We’d love to hear what you like and what you don’t like about our blog. We really appreciate all the commenting that many of you do as our goal is always to keep the conversation going. Now is the perfect time for you to tell us what you like and what you don’t as we evaluate our own performance.

Let us know, and don’t pull any punches!

Thanks, The Voodoo Ventures Team

One of the fundamental principles that we operate on with siteMighty is having data at our fingertips so that we know what is going on at all times. We do this by 1) setting metrics, 2) gathering data, and 3) presenting it in an actionable way.

I have staked the growth of siteMighty to analytics: we have to know how we are doing and act accordingly. One of my failings with Huckabuck is that we built a great web-app but never had any idea how or if people were using it. In the end, the most concrete data we had were the $2 checks that rolled in from our advertising rev-share.

I got serious about this at SXSW in March. siteMighty was ready for beta launch, and functionally it was ready, but we already knew that we didn’t have data tracking and analysis tools that would enable us to stay on top of siteMighty. And as I’ve said before, getting to launch is like pulling up to the starting line, the race hasn’t even started yet, so I knew we needed tools to understand siteMighty. Ryan Carson blogged about his meeting with Ryan Allis the 22 year old CEO of a multi million dollar company. Ryan wrote:

What really struck me though, was how he knew his numbers inside and out. He is absolutely hard-core about measuring everything. It was like a slap in the face – as CEO of Carson Systems, I just don’t know enough about what’s going on.

It is critical to know what is going on. So, here’s what we are doing about it:

I designed an analytics dashboard that is mocked up over the the right there. Here are the important things we wanted to track:

• Open support tickets
• The Visitors / Conversion / Paying Users funnel (more on that below)
• Server bandwidth usage and capacity(so we’re prepped for a TechCrunching)
• Aggregate stats on our users sites so we know if they are seeing success
• Revenue stats

Our conversion funnel was designed to really understand how many people we have to get to visit siteMighty in order to actually make a paying customer out of people. I got a lot of insight into doing this from Mike McDermont from Freshbooks. I basically built our funnel around the ideas he presented here on Vitamin. I lifted his conversion funnel for our mockup. (Thanks Mike!)

So, after three iterations of our analytics dashboard here we are. Our current version is over to the right.

This has be instrumental in helping us understand what is going on with siteMighty, react to the needs of users, and evaluate the success of our marketing efforts. We keep this screen up all day for a live look at what is going on.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on any successes with analytics or challenges with not having the data you need. I’d be happy to provide insight into what we are tracking and why, and please feel free to use anything you can learn from our analytics package on your web app.

• Related caveat: I just ordered the new book Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning which has been highly recommended. Check it out.
  

We’re slowly but surely getting our new office outfitted. We got our new conference table today, and you can see it if you want. In fact, you can see us (when we’re at the table) by checking out Voodoo TV Live.

My friend, Blake Poutra, told me about the Cork’d acquisition this morning. This story is right up my alley because it’s about growing a site (which is what we’re doing with siteMighty), and because it involves some amazing design. But first, here’s a little primer on Cork’d:

Cork’d was a niche site, a place for wine lovers who aren’t wine masters to meet and share their wine experiences. Cork’d is a site that an average person can visit to learn a bit about wine, get a recommendation or two, and type up some tasting notes without feeling overwhelmed, out of their depth, or talked-down to.

We’d built the site over a few months, working in our spare time during evenings and weekends. We were trying out new techniques, pulling out the stops, seeing what it would be like to create a site that wasn’t driven by client deadlines, statements of work, or contractual obligations. We were building it for fun.

Of course we had no idea if Cork’d would ever become something people would actually use. I remember right after launch we agreed that if we had a total of 500 user sign-ups in the next 30 days, the site would be a huge success. As it turned out, we had that many members within the next few hours. Within the week, we had over 5,000 new members. We were amazed as the user base climbed to over 20,000.

Ok. Cork’d exploded not because of the idea, its innovative strategies, or amazing design principles. It flew because it gave the users exactly what they wanted, and by doing that, it fulfilled a need. This is a hardcore community of wine enthusiasts which leads me to the reason I wrote this post in the first place. Take a look at the screengrab below. Note the language this user uses:

“The funk is there for sure”

“Nose: asparagus, toe sweat, and V8″

“Like chewing on the strings of a baseball glove…”

That last statement is what got me. When I first read the review, I was like, oops, some spam got through. Then I realized that he rated it 90.0/100.0. They must have liked it. Then I remembered chewing on my own glove in the outfield as a kid. It was a happy memory. This review must be good.

So then I recall my days waiting tables when I used to have to know a little bit about wine. I would get people every now and then who would come in and make strange requests about very expensive bottles of wine (i.e. placing a bottle of Chardonnay in an ice bath half ice, half water and a tumbler of club soda).

This guy is speaking to Cork’d members who are looking for a toe sweaty, tomatoey Red to go with their lamb. And Cork’d members are seeking reviews like this on Cork’d to make a purchase decision about a particular bottle of wine.

Kudos to Cork’d for getting out of the way and letting this type of conversation take place.It’s a fascinating example of how your users can really take you places. It’s the new way of saying the customer is always right.

We’re slowly but surely getting our new office outfitted. We got our new conference table today, and you can see it if you want. In fact, you can see us (when we’re at the table) by checking out Voodoo TV Live.

A few months ago, we met Mitchell Cohen at SXSW. He’s a passionate entrepreneur who’s already sold one of his companies, and is starting another (or two). Did I mention he’s 20? His new company, ClixConnect.com, offers 24/7/365 live-chat support for the little guy (aka not Nordstrom or Amazon). I love stories like this, and we’ll continue to follow Mitchell’s path to complete world domination. In the meantime, chew on this interview:

Tell us a little about yourself? Who are you? How old are you? What’s your background?

I just finished my third year of university at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

I am essentially a serial entrepreneur; I was the kid sitting in front of his lemonade stand everyday in the summer (and not only that, I had a hot chocolate stand in the winter, I grew up in Canada). I started a tech consulting company with a friend as a fun summer project about 4 years ago. We grew it and it was acquired last summer (June ‘06). I can’t sit still, so now I’m working on this project with a friend from school here in Montreal (his name is Miki, he started a CD/DVD distribution company 5 years ago, [and] it is profitable). I’m also working with a group in another .com startup at the present time (that one is much, much larger in scale; we’re in stealth mode there, so I can’t say much).

I am 20. I was born in Toronto, Canada, lived in Reno, NV and Chicago, IL for a few years, and then decided to make the loop and return to Canada for school.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

Where did the idea for ClixConnect come from?

I love to do my shopping online, because it doesn’t matter if it’s 1:00 AM or 1:00 PM, it can be done anytime. The problem, however, is that most smaller online merchants cannot justify the cost of having someone around 24/7 to staff a live-chat tool. As such, when you’re browsing their site at 1:00 AM, there’s no one around to help you if you have a question. For these smaller guys, this is a huge competitive disadvantage because they’re not really 24/7, like a Nordstrom’s or eBay, both of whom have 24/7 live chat support. Visitors to these smaller merchants’ websites MAY send an e-mail inquiry when live-chat is closed, and even if they do that, there is no guarantee that they won’t purchase from a competitor while waiting for a response. We decided to setup a service enabling small online merchants to create a big-merchant feel for their websites, and ensure that prospective customers do not defect to the competition simply because they can’t get an answer to their question. If you’re paying $2.00 a click to get someone to your site from Google, it would be a shame to lose a prospective customer (and $2.00) just because they couldn’t find an answer to their question.

Who’s involved? How many people are working with you? For you?

There are two of us in Montreal; myself and a friend of mine, Miki. We manage the business. We have a team of 4 people monitoring the live-chat service 24/7, to ensure that all inquiries are responded to quickly and efficiently. We are working with 1 coder, from Romania, who has done a fantastic job on developing the back-end software.

What are the roles of the people involved?

Myself – Ops, customer support, marketing
Miki – Sales, marketing

How does it work?

A subscriber signs up for our live-chat service at www.clixconnect.com. We then create an account for them within 24-hours, customized to meet their specifications (custom logo, greetings, etc.). We send the subscriber a tiny HTML code snippet, which they can then install on their website (or we can do it for them, free of charge) (this is what enables the ClixConnect live-chat button on and proactive up-sell/cross-sell tool their website). Then, subscribers are able to respond to chat inquiries on their website using the ClixConnect operator console (which can be run online from ClixConnect.com, or can be downloaded onto their computer). When the subscriber is not logged in, or does not respond to an incoming chat inquiry after a predetermined amount of time, the inquiry is automatically forwarded to a ClixConnect operator. The ClixConnect operator will respond to the chat inquiry on behalf of the subscriber using information obtained from the subscriber when they first signed up. If the operator is unable to find the answer to the website visitor’s question using the information obtained at signup and information available on the subscriber’s website, the operator can place an outbound call to the subscriber (if the subscriber wishes) to find out the answer to the website visitor’s question. The operator will then respond to the website visitor with the information obtained in the phone call.

The other feature, the automated up-sell/cross-sell is included in the HTML snippet sent to the subscriber (in the previous section). This tool enables the website owner to specify automated chat messages to appear when website visitors are on certain pages of their website. Say you are a clothing outlet. You can specify that, after 10-seconds of viewing a certain red shirt on your website, a chat box appears recommending a nice pair of blue pants to go with that red shirt. The website visitor could then view the blue pants by clicking the link in the chat box, or could respond to the inquiry by typing a response into the chat box, at which point the operator console rings with an incoming chat request (subscriber then ClixConnect operator). There are timeout settings which can be adjusted so that website visitors do not get annoyed by receiving too many proactive messages during one visit.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

How are you funded?

100% bootstrapped!

Where do you hope to be 1 year from now? 5 years? 10 years?

1 year – We hope to have a strong customer base (400+ customers), be profitable, and be having a great time doing what we’re doing.

5 years, 10-years – I can’t really speculate that far into the future. Remember, I’m only 20. If you had asked me 10-years ago where I thought I’d be in 10-years I’d probably have told you that I would be a professional hockey player, and in the off season, I’d be swimming with Shamu at SeaWorld. I’m an opportunist. I go where the opportunity takes me 

Another Point:
Miki and I are both very intensely community-focused. We have a passion for bettering our communities and the world in general. In an effort to do our part, we have developed a 5/5 initiative. With this initiative, we are donating 5% of our profits and 5% of our service capacity for ClixConnect to non-profits. It’s a small thing, I know, but we’re trying our best to do our part.

Now, some questions from my perspective as a potential client.

Who is handling the support? Is it your local team or do you outsource?

Half and half. Miki and I try to get as many inquiries as possible. When we’re not around (or sleeping, for those 3-4 hours per day), we have a back-end team that takes care of incoming inquiries.

Right now, I’m handling most of our support. I have somewhat specific techniques I use to communicate with our users. We are very friendly, personal and have tons of Aw Shucks appeal. How do you handle representing a variety of corporate cultures?

We tailor our representation strategies to meet the needs of each individual client. Every time we acquire a new client, we go through a rigorous process of understanding the client’s business culture, and then transfer that knowledge to our support team over the course of a few training sessions. We’re still very small. As such, we can be very flexible when it comes to our strategies in working with clients. We are here to make our clients happy, and we’ll do everything in our power to make that happen.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

How much is your service?

Tiered pricing model, based upon ClixConnect operator minutes desired:

• $49/mo. – 100 minutes/mo.
• $139/mo. – 350 minutes/mo.
• $299/mo – 1000 minutes/mo.
• We can create custom packages for 1000 minutes/mo. +

How are you planning to scale? (Meeting the needs of tons of requests once you’re huge)

Our outsourced team of support agents can scale very quickly. Anytime we hit 70% of total capacity, we will add another agent. We will not let ourselves hit above 75% capacity, ever.

How do you protect against outages and downtime? How are you ensuring 24/7/365?

Outages and downtime – We have redundancies in place to prevent against this. We also host our software on high-quality, dedicated servers.

Ensuring 24/7/365 – We have 3-4 operators online and responding to chat inquiries at any given time, 24/7/365. If one needs to step away for 10-minutes, the others will cover his/her position.

Do you handle any support yourself?

Yes. As was the case with my previous company, I try to take inquiries whenever possible. Additionally, I handle all customer/billing/installation issues.

I think it would be interesting to learn how you are building your team. Especially for a company like this, finding good people is paramount. Walk us through what you have in mind for building an amazing team.

We plan on taking on a team of experts in customer interaction and business development once we reach the appropriate scale. Individuals looking to work with us need to be intensely focused on one thing; the customer. That’s the only requirement we have. Everything else can be learned as time progresses.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

I listen to internet radio all day long at work and often in the evening at home. It is such a wonderful medium to listen to music because of the diversity of what you can find. When I moved to New Orleans from LA, my favorite radio station KCRW came with me in the form of KCRWmusic.com, which I listen to religiously.

Internet radio is under attack. As soon as July 15th, the landscape could change dramatically due to new royalty rates that are set to take effect then. These rates would effectively drive smaller broadcasters off the air. According to the New York Times:

The proposed increases could raise the cost of sound recordings for Internet stations 300 percent to 1,200 percent, and have set off a furious political struggle…..Those efforts prompted Senators Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, to introduce legislation last Thursday to reverse a Copyright Royalty Board decision setting the new rates.

There is something we can do:

• Visit SaveNetRadio.org and sign the petiton and read about the recent bill to reverse the decision.

I sure hope that thoughtful understanding of the value of diversity of music on the internet prevails over the corporate interests working to line the pockets of the record industry.

Shout outs to my personal web radio favorites:

• KCRWmusic.com (LA)
• KEXP.org (Seattle)
• WWOZ (New Orleans)
• RadioParadise.com