Innovation in Software

Here’s a few things you might not know about this blog:

1. Since its inception it has had nearly 30,000 absolute unique visitors
2. Nearly 20% of them (about 5,800) had no referrer set. They had the site bookmarked or typed in the URL (or perhaps were blocking referrer on purpose for giggles)
3. Over 2,000 people return at least once a month with around 180 or so subscribing via RSS. Plenty more never return (makes us sad), and we get deep visitors often, so there are between 10k-20k page views/month
4. However, I have met less than a dozen people who have told me they read the blog. In other words, there are at a guess somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 people reading regularly who I know absolutely nothing about. Well, apart from the fact that they clearly are intelligent, gorgeous and have exquisite taste, natch.

That causes me some problems. With comments only recently being enabled again, I’m kind of at a loss as to who the heck most of you are and who I’m writing for.

A few months ago I asked for you to fill in a rather lengthy survey, the size of which meant the response rate was kind of low. It was still incredibly valuable, and we’re working on the ideas suggested from that exercise, however there are a lot of you who decided not to bother.

Now I have a special 4-question survey that would take a complete moron less than 30 seconds to fill in. In the honest expectation you are not a moron I expect you to do it in a great deal less time than that. All questions are optional and at the very least you’ll get extra followers on Twitter and via RSS from now on.

Take the “Who The Heck Are You?” survey now and win… nothing, to be honest. Other than praise and thanks.

Incidentally, if you decide to provide a postcode or other specific location information, it will be treated with the very strictest of confidence, I’m only interested in aggregate data (it will be separated from the rest of the data before I look at it, promise), I’m not interested in stalking you. Much.

It’s been just under a full day since the survey went up and I asked you all to give up 10 minutes to let me know what I can do to serve you better. Response is steady and trends are starting to emerge albeit still with rather large confidence intervals (i.e. not enough responses to bet the bank on yet).

What interests me about the results so far is that there are clearly distinct groups who all perceive Vagueware differently. Clients/Ex-clients see Vagueware as one entity, blog readers/twitter followers see it as something completely different, and then there is my own perception which doesn’t quite align with either. That is of course entirely my own fault; I don’t have a marketing plan so much as a “turn up and be charismatic and see what people ask me to do” plan.

The two areas there appears to be most appetite for at the moment are innovation and analysis. Whilst there is some interest in B2B and B2C services (which is what I’ve been focusing on internally for the last couple of months), most of you just don’t care about my plans for World domination.

However even those who have expressed an interest in SaaS products are bullish about innovation, creative thinking and analysis of the industry. Maybe I could combine all of these, time will tell.

I really do value this feedback and it will be critical to how I shape the business in coming weeks or months, so if you want me to do something to help you more effectively, cheaper or in a more directed manner, now is your chance to speak.

And thanks to all who have participated so far (apart from the Company Secretary who is merely childish – “Monkey Tennis” anyone?), you’re all awesome.

As you might have been able to guess, I’ve been doing some house-keeping and re-organising of the business in recent weeks. Now it’s time to take a slightly more holistic approach.

I’m planning to give this blog, the twitter feed and the general service offerings of Vagueware a Spring clean over the coming weeks and it would be invaluable to have your input.

So, would you mind just spending 10 minutes of your valuable time letting me know what you think? I can’t wait to see your responses – especially as I don’t know many of the subscribers to this blog’s RSS feed.

Honestly, 8 question, 10 minutes max, you help me shape my business for the next year and beyond, give it a whirl