Get best of the week

How I created and then ruined my company

An interesting story about how the burnout of the owner could kill a very promising IT company.

Five years ago with one article tag on "Habré" the history of UXhot began. Then, with the filing of “Business Youth”, only the lazy did not make landings, and the belief in them was so strong that very soon it was impossible to poke a mouse in an empty place so as not to get into the landing. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of the quality was so low that I wanted to gouge my eyes out from the next countdown timer or megascale.

Article “ To Each on the Landing Page. Sore"Was a cry of the soul, but at the same time it pursued a specific goal - to show that even the creation of a seemingly simple and primitive landing (but what's so complicated?) Should be accompanied by at least a minimal attempt to understand the characteristics of the business and the needs of the target audience. Once in a painful spot of public indignation, the article very quickly gained a quarter of a million views, was copied a dozen times, received many expert feedback and generated a tight flow of customers for several years to come.

Clients liked my approach to the development of the landing page, so in spite of a very overheated market and exceeding the “average hospital cost” of services, they chose me.

In truth, I was not ready for such a rapid development of events. There was no office, there was no team. There was only me - a UX designer with a good technical background, which allowed me at the beginning of the path to close all the stages from designing the interface to layout of the landing myself.

Very soon, the scope of tasks began to exceed capabilities. So the team appeared, and with it the first office - a small, walk-in room subleased by a stagnant outdoor advertising agency.

By delegating visual design and front-end, I focused on the most important, which allowed us to strongly discord with other offers on the market. The process was built in such a way that the UI designer received a ready-made, highly detailed prototype with almost final texts. And I was engaged in its design.

Despite the prevailing pattern-driven approach in the market, I individually approached each project, paying considerable attention to research and interviews with each of the business participants: from the general director to sales managers.

Talking about the actual experience, in the process of in-depth face-to-face interviews, I was able to dive quite deeply into the features of each particular business and extract really important knowledge that formed the basis of the subsequent interface.

This approach allowed us to move more consciously: not blindly copy competitors or implement unnecessary customer wishes, but create truly convenient and useful products for the target audience that effectively solve the required business tasks.

Whatever topic we take, be it an SMS-mailing service, a travel agency, smartphone covers, whiskey stones or student assistance, each project turned out to be self-identical and effective. And the landing page for the mechanized plastering service has become almost an industry standard that has spawned hundreds of direct and indirect copies.

Rapid growth


Quite quickly, we formed a pool of customers who needed more than just a landing page. So we came to the support service. For a guaranteed monthly fee, we systematically continued to work on the development of the project and without realizing it, we turned into a boutique agency.

Wanting to remove the burden of Internet marketing from customers, I wanted to provide a full service from a single window. Therefore, search engine optimization, contextual advertising and crowd marketing were added to the site development service. Our clients could focus on the development of their business without being distracted by the constant debate with various contractors. Many even ceased to be interested in what exactly and how we are doing. The main thing is that there is a result. And he was.

This period was the most entertaining in the history of the company. We moved to a new, spacious office in the business center and grew to ten employees, not including freelance employees.


The first day in the new office right after the repair

We almost stopped accepting orders for landings, focusing on the development of ongoing projects and the creation of large sites.

During the “discount fever”, when every first site of plastic windows was full of cruel dumping, we launched “Windows of the Future”, where, referring to other values, we were able to load the production to its full capacity, and after a while they pulled up the market again, revealing and occupying a completely free segment "Windows without installation."

Strongly lifted the bar by making a new website for HR Solutions Smart Provider, forcing competitors to urgently pull themselves up. Three years have passed since the launch, and the site is still one of the best in the niche, helping the company grow several times from year to year.

We rethought the site of the manufacturer of paint and varnish materials "Element Ukraine", helped to enter the international market contact center Simply Contact, and then another and ten other different companies.

During this development period, I received an offer of investment. A successful serial entrepreneur offered help and money in exchange for a share, but I, being too self-confident, politely refused. We grew so fast that I simply could not believe in the possibility of failure.

First problems


Along with growth, the first problems began. The increase in the volume of services and the number of employees created an increased burden on me. As it turned out, I unconsciously egocentered all communication between employees and decision making. This position allowed us to grow rapidly in the beginning, without creating difficulties for several employees, but turned into a real problem with an increase in staff and an increase in the volume of tasks.

Realizing the problem, we began to learn to interact and make decisions on our own. This yielded results, but the load was still high. That's because I was still the only person in the company who sold, talked with customers, managed projects and designed interfaces.

Wanting to focus on the development of the company, I tried to delegate UX, but not one of the hired UX designers of various levels has ever come close to what is needed.

Being a "narrow neck", from time to time I was the reason for the failure of promising presales or project dates. It was becoming increasingly difficult to monitor the development of the company and the quality of service. More and more thoughts of burnout appeared in my head.

To stop moral stagnation, I changed my eating habits, went to the gym and started learning English. After a while, I managed to fall in love with salads, lose 15 kg and get the Upper-Intermediate level. Energy has noticeably increased.


In this photo, I threw off the first 7 kg. As many more to come

At this time, Alfa-Bank Ukraine launched a competition for the best interface for its mobile banking application. I have long wanted to design something for a mobile, and the chance was excellent. Having thrown everything away and plunged headlong into the task, in just five days he formed a concept and designed key screens, which he wrote about in detail on Habré. And even later, as a team, they prototyped and decorated everything in a full-fledged case.

While working on the mobile application interface for Alfa-Bank Ukraine, I suddenly realized that I had not experienced such powerful enthusiasm and flow conditions for a long time. I realized that my daily tasks turned into a routine and no longer bring past pleasure. At the same time, designing a mobile application interface gave me a lot of new challenges and completely captured me. I began to actively visualize a large mobile application project.

And in between visualizations, he was entertained by usability audits of random projects. By writing, “ Can All Money Be? Three million site usability audit ”and then“ How Maksidoma marketers lose millions by flirting with Growth marketing: independent usability audit", I could not imagine what a big role they will play in my visualization.

A crisis


Working with regular customers, I unknowingly fell into the comfort zone and practically stopped doing anything to attract new ones. When part of the old customers began to fall away for various reasons, and all the old activities ceased to bring leads, a crisis broke out in the company that made me write again. By this time, we already had a significant number of cases worthy of attention.

On behalf of the company, we told several stories, but the most successful and failed was “ The story of one landing: attracted many customers and was copied a hundred times". The article hung all day on the main page of vc.ru, receiving significant coverage by the standards of the site (now more than 40 thousand views), as well as on Habré (48 thousand views) and attracted a total of more than 100 leads. The problem was that most of them wanted a landing (which I was already not interested in doing) with the same deep and high-quality approach, but for 500 rubles, of course.

Nevertheless, the articles worked, and we found customers who allowed us to get out of the crisis.

Fornex has become one of the new customers. As it turned out, this is a fairly successful hosting with a large pool of customers and an excellent level of service. However, visiting the company’s website a year earlier, visitors without a recommendation could only guess about it. Those rare lucky ones, who nevertheless wished to become a client, faced a lot of difficulties that form a clearly negative impression of the company as a whole.

After reviewing the flow order, without drastic changes, we were able to significantly improve the conversion already in the first iteration. And over time, having completely redesigned key landing pages, increase the number of new customers at times.

Company closure


The way out of the crisis only had a short-term effect on my inner worldview. I still tried to give myself completely to work and betrayed a high level of quality. At the same time, he spent much more energy and time than in the old days. There is more frustration and cheaper dopamine. The nearby patisserie has become a favorite place for dinner, and previously thrown off kilograms began to return.

However, the real impetus for the decision to close the company was an order to design a Wellness-marketplace mobile application for the US market (remember about my visualization?). It was the same megaproject, full of new challenges that I had been waiting for. With unprecedented enthusiasm for a long time, I literally pounced on working on it, giving the rest of the work to the team.

I began to come to the office before everyone else. Every day I experienced an intoxicating feeling of flow. I was gushing with energy and for the first time in a long time I again enjoyed working.

And finally he admitted to himself that the company has long been a burden. I realized that the desire to embrace everything at once was a mistake that led to my burnout. I realized that I wanted to focus on what was actually always interesting to me - User Experience Design.

The idea of ​​closing the company was in the air for a long time, so it was not a big surprise for the employees when, one morning, when I parked my car near the office, I suddenly felt that the time had come.

Having dismissed the staff and successfully completed work on the design of the marketplace application, I needed to get distracted. Therefore, after a few weeks, my family and I went for the winter to the island of Tenerife. Resting for several months under the warm sun, I suddenly realized that I had never gone away from work before in my life. That earlier, even on vacation, did not stop thinking about work and related problems. I realized how much I became truly free for the first time in many years, and how the once-lost energy fills me again.

Conclusion


For five years, we launched a hundred projects: from static one-handed students to large, technically complex sites. We worked with a variety of businesses: from startups to large companies. We stepped on the slippery path of binary options. Corrected interface errors of a dating application with a millionth audience.

At the same time, they never resorted to paid advertising and most of the time did not even have their own website.

Nevertheless, clients found us and were ready to wait in moments when we could not take the project to work immediately. We have built long-term relationships with many of them and parted as friends.

We were not chosen for ratings, design trends or dumping. Business orientation and understanding of the deep-seated goals of creating this or that product strongly discord with what customers heard before they accidentally found us.

At the time of closure, we had enough clients and funds for operations. My managerial mistakes and the wrong priorities that finally killed off energy were the only good reason.

PSThis article was first published on vc.ru a few days earlier, where it received a high response and unexpected social effect. About ten people have already written to me in telegrams just to share their stories. This is wonderful and may even form the basis of some next article to help those who are in the same situation, but prefer to keep it within themselves.

More articles:


All Articles