Independent Game Thoughts

In part one of this series, I laid out a foundation for driving traffic to your web site.  It started with the notion of identifying the users that come to your site.  In this post, I will talk about a few methods for accomplishing this goal because knowing where your users are coming from will give you more insight into how your web site is actually being used.  Your first "vision" for your web site is very likely not going to be the vision that your users espouse.  Viewing patterns, usage patterns and page hits will vary dramatically from the original vision for the site.  This doesn't mean that the site is a failure.

As Helmuth von Moltke stated, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."  So it will be with your initial vision for your web site only let's call the enemy your users and not use such a harsh word.  Once you get over the idea that you're right about your site's usage, you can begin to measure and adapt your site to better suit your users.  Take your initial vision and use it as a baseline.  Write down the answers to the following questions.

1. How many hits per day do I expect?
2. How long do I expect my users to stay on the web site?
3. What do I expect my users to do on my web site?
4. What information do I want each user to give me when they visit my web site?
5. How many users will I need to see on my web site to get a single customer referral?

Start there.  Later we'll add closure rates, A/B testing and other more advanced topics.  If you are not sure of the answers to the above questions, that's ok.  You can use your first iteration to develop your baseline but go into it knowing that appreciable results won't happen until you establish a baseline with which to compare against.  So how do we do this?

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Whenever I consult with a client about setting up a web site, I'm inevitably asked about how to use Twitter.com or Facebook.com in conjunction with their web site.  This is a big topic so I am going to break it up into a couple of parts.  First off, if you haven't read my thoughts on the difference between Facebook and Twitter, check out the following article.  These posts will build off of that basic understanding.  Let's frame a couple of ground rules for these posts.  If you don't fit into this scenario then this advice may or may not work for you.

1. I'm mostly concerned with companies that want to drive traffic to their web site.
2. The companies that I deal with, typically have one or more people that are the face of the company but still distinct from the company itself.
3. This person being an expert or perceived as an expert in their field is very important to their careers and to the success of the company.

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A while back, I posted a blog post about the track record for the Louisville Venture Club.  The results were not encouraging to new entrepreneurs.  While, It’s not published anywhere, the total 2009 investment dollars number presented at the January 2010 Venture Club Luncheon was just over $20M.  Mark Crane of GLI made it a point to state that he didn’t know about all of the deals in Louisville.  He was positive that there were more deals but that he knew of most of them.  I take “most” to mean at least half or more so let’s optimistically say Louisville VC totaled $40M in 2009.  That’s not enough.

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This post has been coming for a month or so now. I and EPI are no longer pursuing the idea of developing and producing Ages of Athiria. I'm sure there's quite a few people that will come out and tell me that they told me so. There's been plenty of naysayers along our journey over the past...

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In my previous post on this topic , I discussed a curious email that I had received regarding investment in our company. About two weeks ago I received a second set of emails from this person. I have not responded to the emails because I still believe this was a scam but I promised an update. Here’s...

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In November of 2009, I pitched our video game, Ages of Athiria , to the Louisville Venture Club at the venture club’s monthly meeting. What follows in this post is a transcript of an email conversation that seemed to come from a legitimate person willing to invest into our company. Needless to...

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Kentucky Enterprise Fund (KEF) declined to invest in our project. I’ve known this for just over a week now and I was hoping to be able to post an update here with additional information from our other sources of funding. Unfortunately, it seems as if mother nature got in the way of communications...

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As investment prospects go, I’m encouraged by what we’ve seen to date. I’ve spoken with a few investors and generally, those that take the time to listen to our pitch end up liking the concept and seeing the merits of the business plan. We’ve received our fair share of “No...

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Lot’s of things have happened since I last wrote about our funding status. Two of them are important enough to warrant mentioning in this new post. The first is that the Vogt Award declined our application and elected to give their grants to other companies. I’m curious to find out which...

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Lot’s to talk about. The November Louisville Venture Club presentation went well. We established a couple of good contacts that day and are working hard towards establishing additional contacts. I have more than a few people that I need to call or follow up with and that’s a good sign. About...

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