Web Design Job for the Eager
The reason I was on the phone was because my girlfriend Anna had gone on his website: http://www.renotahoefirewood.com/index.html to order a cord of wood. As it stands, to do this, she had to download a PDF form and then email it back to him. Even after jumping through these hoops, he emailed us and asked us to call because the form was screwed up.
So, Anna had me call the guy, and while I had him on the phone, I decided to ask some questions about his business, and give him some advice on his website. He seems like a really nice guy, and I really like his business - we've discovered that not everyone in the wood business is reliable or honest. But his website is a real travesty.
After talking to him for a while, I learned some things:
* he sells several thousand cords of wood (over a million in revenues)
* his website gets around 50 visits per day
* he traded a cord of wood for his website, including hosting
* he has two types of clientele - people who live in the Bay and own multiple houses, and less affluent people around Truckee
* he manually imports the PDFs people send him into Quickbooks
* he's very friendly and likes to talk on the phone
What i took away from all this is that there is a lot of money sitting on the table. If you follow hacker news, you know that simple usability issues (remember the $300,000,000 button from yesterday) can make or break a web business. And he has a segment of clientele who really appreciate a good website.
It seems to me that if this guy had a better way to order would online, if his website better conveyed his brand (reliable and high quality), and he didn't have to manually input forms, he could make a lot more money. Now, I do sort of get the feeling that the guy is leery of paying a lot of cash for a nice website, but I think if someone came to him with a good deal, that involved some cash and perhaps a gain-share on sales, he might be interested.
So that's the story. I just met this random guy while ordering a cord of wood., and I asked myself - where might I find some enterprising young web developers who see the same opportunity I did? I'd aggressively pursue this myself, but I recently got some funding for my company trailbehind.com.
By the end of the conversation, the guy seemed sold on improving his website this summer (during the off-season) - but I told him I wasn't available. If you are, I'll put you in touch, or you can even bypass me and call him yourself. My only hope is by this time next year, I can buy a new cord of wood online.