For the past year, I have been working on a project and I am struggling to launch it. It’s a website, http://www.masparati.com that will help small and medium local business to increase sales. The site will sell items for these small stores and the buyer will pick the items up at the store with a personalized coupon.

The catch is that this website is in Spanish and it’s targeted to professional Latinos. The website will sell Latino items that are hard to find, items that will make a connection to the buyers because it will remind them the country they are from. The site will also offer a small discount to make the products more appealing to potential buyers and while some people are comparing my concept to Groupon and Living Social, this website is very different.

I am not 100% in agreement how these group buying sites sell these items, many times with no profit to the stores making the stores loose money. This website will have a limited number of items to sell and it will be offered for a limited time and even though, the item will be discounted it will be discounted to just make it appealing to the buyers. I want these stores not only to make money on these sales I want their store traffic to increase when the merchandise is picked up.

Más Para Tí will take a small profit from the sales, but trust me it’s very small profit. I can now afford to do it very low because still in beta. What I am now struggling is to get my foot at the door with merchants. I have started to build an email list, but while I don’t this to be the only way people find out about these items. I am also planning to run Facebook Ads and Google Adwords in Espanol. Any other suggestions?

I have been using FourSquare for about two years and I check in just about every place I go. Lately, I have been trying to understand how the point system works and I think I found tips and tricks that I am going to share.

• When you can check in at three places right after the other, you will get points for each check in. After three you will get a message  that they are too many check ins.
• When you check in and don’t share it with your friends, you earn the same amount of points, but there must be a limit of check in that you can like this, FourSquare calls this “Off the Grid”. It seems that after you check in Off the Grid for too long, you will only earn one points even if it’s a place you have visited for the first time. When this happens, share it with your FourSquare friends and you will get your points back
• Check in into new places, this will earn you at least 5 points, 3 for being there for the first time and 2 for being the first one of your friends to check in. Of course if you FourSquare friends were already there, you will only get 3.
• When you check in to new places, it’s also more than likely that you will check in to a place with a new category which carries more points!
• Don’t over check more than 3 times in one hour. It seems if you do, you will get penalized with points and even the next day it will tell you that you have too many check ins and you won’t get any points

I know this is silly, but I am a competitive person and if I have 100 people as FourSquare friends, I want to have the most points and be number#1. Don’t get me wrong, I do also offer the location base offer, which is what FourSquare is all about, but I have to earn those point and badges as I go.

Lately, I have been getting lots of spam comments, some in Russian, some in Japanese and some that just don’t make sense. In three days, I had 183 comments and while this was exciting, it was sad to realize that these came from all over the world and they are spams. Well, that was the end of it. I have added WP-reCAPTCHA to my blog and this should stop these darn comments. While this might be a pain for someone really trying to add a legit comment, it’s quick solution that will flood my inbox. What do you use? Done!

So, I get a new email from Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite CEO and of course confirming that the message that he sent out on April first was a joke. However, they are releasing an iPhone game called “Happy Owls” like it was mentioned on April 1. Ryan in his email even included links to other website that already reviewed the game. I guess sending that prank email was a good marketing strategy for people to preview the new game, spread the word and eventually increase sales. So, have any of you downloaded the game? What’s the difference between “Happy Owls” and “Angry Birds”. The game looks pretty much the same and the overall game seems similar.

Why is this game better than Angry Birds? I guess we will see if this game becomes a flop!

Below is a screen capture of the email I received.

If you use Hootsuite, it’s possible that you received an email from Ryan Holmes, CEO at Hootsuite. The email said

Board, Investors and Friends,

Things have been going really well at HootSuite for the last while, but after watching the massive growth of Zynga and the likes, I’ve been thinking a lot about if we are in the right business? Building on top of third party platforms can be challenging, and the team and I want a change. I know that this will come as a surprise, but as of today we’re pivoting business models with the launch of Happy Owls (screenshot and link to private beta below). This game is really addictive and I think we stand a great shot of making an even bigger splash in a really fun market.

As always I appreciate your support, and please keep confidential until our public announcement on Monday.

Ryan
______________________________
Ryan Holmes, CEO
HootSuite – Social Media Dashboard

http://hootsuite.com/happy-owls

—————————-

Was this a fake?  A few minutes later he sent another email saying to disregard this email because it was sent by mistake. This seems kind of weird, maybe a way to let everybody know about their new product. You be the judge.

If you are in the creative field, I am sure you have heard the term “Make it Pop”. But what does this really mean? As a professional in the creative field, this term is not only not helpful, but it is also annoying. Today, I have heard this term twice and the second time I heard it, it just made me laugh. I wonder if the people that say it know that the professionals in the design field laugh out loud when they hear it. What kills me even more is when I hear it from other people in the same field. So let’s drill down in what it really means. It means that within the creative components, you need to have a specific area stand out more than the other. All creative pieces have a hierarchy level and “Making it POP” means that you need a specific area of this hierarchy be the first component. That is all it really means. The execution in how you do it is completely up to the designer and NOT THE PERSON that is saying “MAKING IT POP” Make it POP

Have you seen an explosion of UX web testing sites? I saw so many ads for a particular company in the blogs I normally read, that I decided to take one for a run, the name of the company, Loop 11. I tried reading the FAQ page in detail before going through the whole process, but I was unable to find the answer that I was really looking for, “Who is testing the site?”

Either way, I figured it’s free the first time so I went for it. The interface was awesome, very modern looking site, great colors, easy to find the information, but it’s lacking of the most important thing. They are expecting you to find your own testers. The software all it does is to place your site in your profile and allows you to send a link to the testers you will need to get. This link will allow the testers test the usability and add comments right on this application. That’s all fine, but if I am going to get people to test the usability of my site, I can do it without paying the $300+ per project to Loop11. All of my projects are small and I will not be able to afford to get my testers, pay them and pay Loop 11. I guess this application doesn’t work for budget projects.

I will be in search for different company that will provide me with the testers and the results. Which application have you tried?

Have you watched it yet? I went to watch it the night it opened and theater was not as full as I thought it was going to be? However, I think the movie was great. While I am not 100% sure if the story line is entirely true, I think the movie had an excellent picture and I enjoyed watching it. To some degree, it was inspiring because just like Mark Zuckerberg, I had and I have ideas that are in paper or in my head, but that never make it to development and this movie has motivated me to keep trying. So, hopefully in the next few months I will be blogging about my projects launching and will see what happens. I give the movie 4.5 stars out of 5.

I read in a blog today that the next design trends in the next five years will be social media, mobile media and greening of design. Now, we all know that social media has already become very popular and that most likely will stay for the next five years. Facebook, twitter, digg, delicious, Tumblr, blogger and the list goes on and on. They are for sure making its  way into the graphic design world. Face it, if you want traffic drive to your site, social media will help you do that.

Now, mobile media. Now, that is also a growing specially now that phones are getting more and more sophisticated. There is a new smart phone coming out next year (I think) by T-Mobile that supports flash. Can you imagine how will this change the business for us?

Now, what does greening our designs really mean? Does it mean that print will probably face out? Is direct mail dead? In the next five years will we see companies spending less on direct mail and more on mobile and social marketing marketing? This means that we will probably have to get ready for this change, teach ourselves new tricks and be ready to ride the next wave.

Send me a note if you have a comment.

As a web designer is so hard to keep up with the never ending changes of this business. But, finding other blogs that gives you freebies that explains you how to do stuff that you normally say “HOW AM I GOING TO DO THAT?” is the best thing. Thanks to all the people that do. So, I am doing my part and I am spreading the word. Here is a blog I found that give yous several Web 2.0 CSS tricks. Great Site.

http://css-tricks.com/downloads/