Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 by
Michael •
Congratulations to Smalltown.com… it launched its seventh small town website today. Some lessons…
Smalltown, San Carlos went live today. This is our seventh Smalltown site; we continue to make our way down the Peninsula from Millbrae to Palo Alto as planned. The most interesting detail regarding San Carlos is that we built the new site and pre-loaded it with content in only two weeks. Our very first town, Burlingame, which is about the same size as San Carlos, took four times as many person-hours to prepare. We’re figuring out how to launch new towns in much less time for much less money.
Our ability to launch a new town efficiently will be very important when we start to expand to hundreds of towns. We’re speeding up the process in three ways.
1. We’re learning that “Halo Towns” are easier to launch than “Virgin Towns”. Burlingame was a virgin town because it was first. There weren’t any adjacent Smalltown Sites. On the other hand, San Carlos borders several towns that already have Smalltown sites.
2. We’re happy if 85% of the content is updated and accurate. The last 15% is just too time consuming to track down and correct… Unlike most directory information databases, the longer a Smalltown site is around, the more accurate its data becomes.
3. Our processes are getting better. We’ve had time to try out several variations of walking down streets with a camera and a clipboard, and the current process is much faster and more accurate.