lourish.com, the grow your own/share your own gardening swap site, launched earlier this month for gardeners to swap their surplus home grown fruit and veg with people near them. The free site was conceived, built and then promoted by Lourish’s founder Dave Bower for a little over £1000 after he quit his job to do something “less corporate”. In his presentation Dave will describe the ideas behind Lourish, the challenges of single-handedly building a site with almost no money, the use of social media for free online promotion and will look at the future of lourish.com.

1. Growing lourish.com Building a website on a shoestring Dave Bower – http://lourish.com © Lourish 2010

2. Coming up... A little background Before you start Building a public website Promoting – If you build it, they're really unlikely to ever bother coming Wrap up and Q+A

3. I'm great, me... 10 years software engineering 5 years leading dev teams for Internet start-ups C#/Java/Grails development Gardener

4. lourish.com

5. The need for Lourish Gardening sites are all rubbish Community gardening not involving 20-40 group I had a LOT of cucumbers Job driving me insane!

6. Before you start Get a grown-up to help you Bounce ideas Keep work options open Stop buying stuff!

7. Low cost start up You don't need a new PC/server/phone/shoes a company (yet) Buy domains Free email + docs from Google Free developer tools SAAS may be expensive in the long run, but it has low initial cost

8. The tease Internet presence, you will need... Holding page Blog Vague but exciting details Gather email addresses Survey (WUFOO, Survey Monkey) Email form

9. Designing Fewer features Cut out the unnecessary screens/features/details Make common case simple Leave the absolute bare minimum Create real pages Involve a designer as early as possible Agree cost and time scale up front if you can They know their stuff – take notice Find someone interested in what you're doing

10. Implementing If you don't code... Kiss goodbye to building a website on a shoestring! Find someone you really trust who doesn't just code but who also manages developers Managing developers is really difficult Software is hard to estimate Financial incentives Other incentives

11. Implementing Thank God you can code... Choose technologies with longevity What are your strengths? Outsource everything else Plan realistically Missing milestones? Work out why Don't be afraid to completely change direction Move in to ideaSpace!

12. Lourish Architecture

13. Test It! Really, really test it Unit test, TDD even better Functional test UI Test Load test Staging environment To beta or not to beta? Users expect a working site, “beta” label or not

14. Launch! (And you thought you'd done the hard part...) It's easy to build a website, it's very difficult to get one noticed Promoting is as important as building Good support experience can create devoted users Use monitoring to provide feedback

15. Promotion It's not rocket science Consistent communication throughout Use 1 key message, with maybe 1 or 2 subsidiary messages Expect Apathy Insults Mistrust “XYZ.com does it better” Keep promoting

16. Promotion - Email Use emails gathered from teaser site People will forget they registered...

17. Promotion - Email Expect to be marked as spam if you didn't have double opt-in Use mailing service Mailchimp / Campaign Monitor / Constant Contact Protection from “spammer” status Monitoring Expect low conversion from email to site

19. Promotion – Social Media Newsgroups No self-promotion! Use Google alerts to find out what’s being said where Blogs Support the site through a blog Promote blog through Twitter and Facebook Get influential bloggers to write about you Add blog stream to site for easy CMS!

20. Promotion – Social Media Facebook Like Company page Insights Twitter Use follows to position yourself Use link shorteners for tracking (bit.ly, twitpic etc) Keep posting updates or risk looking dead!

21. Promotion – Social Media Integrate into site APIs Single sign on News feeds Give a reason for users to promote site

22. Promotion – Press Press releases Use a story Local papers need local angle Targeted – one key message Get it noticed Journalists are lazy, write their articles!

23. Promotion – Press Radio and TV Get key message into every answer! Build “bridges” Don't expect a deluge of new visitors! Wrong medium for converting users Get link on their website Promote press appearances via social media

24. Promotion – Grassroots Invites Trusted 1 in 3 invite 1 in 10 invites converted Local champions / Virtual champions

25. Promotion – SEO Quality links to site (BBC) Sensible page titles Use image alt attributes Write copy with keywords Home page Blog Choosing a “meaningless” domain name helps!

26. Monitor Google analytics Goals Traffic sources SEO Google alerts See what's being said & respond Bit.ly Facebook insights Wordpress

27. Support Responsibility to help users keep site running and innovating Respond professionally Answer quickly Respond only once to “chat” Use pseudonyms Reply during office hours

28. Eleven Lourish Lessons Get help (even if it’s from a soft toy) Early design input Build absolute minimum Concentrate on strengths, outsource weaknesses Changing your mind is OK but stick to your beliefs Release early and often A website is a responsibility Promotion is everything Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Network DO IT NOW

29. A Website on a Shoestring Free software and SAAS Fewer features Get designer in early Promotion is free

30. Future Lourishment Possible future directions Stronger SN integration Co-operatives Marketplace Fruitures

31. Sign up at http://lourish.com Questions...?