Judy's Blog

Bug Day

Recently Dave has shifted into an engineering role here and has been doing a great job taking care of the inevitable bugs that have been discovered since our last release. You've heard about freestyle friday which Rahul piloted back in December--well Dave has now added Bug Friday (see Freestyle Friday's Evil Twin Sister) to the mix. It's the day when the dev (and overachieving designers) will focus on the low & medium priority bugs--the ones that otherwise would not get a lot of attention. And there's even a prize for the person that fixes the most bugs at the end of the day (you don't get points for fixing bugs you caused). I've been told that bribery is very much encouraged so if you have a "pet bug" as Dave says, it's wise to have a cold beer, snack or coffee card to dangle over the dev area.

What's new at Judy's Book

You may have noticed that we've been keeping a low profile at Judy's Book while working on some updates to our deals site but we're finally ready to unveil all of our hard work. Here are some of the things you can check out:

• A new look and feel: visit http://deals.judysbook.com/ to see the new look. In addition to hosting the latest and most popular deals, the deals site will also give you a glimpse of some of the top coupon codes for the day. Of note, several links are now found on the bottom of the page so make sure to check the whole page out.
• Now on the deals site you can find great deals near you with our local mapping feature. Whether you buy online or in the store, Judy’s Book will help you find the best deals to save the most.
• Looking for a deal in your neighborhood? Judy’s Book has partnered with ShopLocal.com to provide the most comprehensive local deals with 3,000 to 4,000 new local deals a day. Click and print a coupon to save with Judy’s Book everywhere you shop.

And this is just the beginning of what's to come at Judy's Book. We'll keep you posted as we roll out new features and functionality over the next weeks and months.

Innovation & Execution

Here's a great blog post from Matt about innovation and execution and the implications of making tradeoffs here at Judy's Book:

Broad-brush, there are only two things that a startup needs to do to become a wild, runaway success:

1. Innovate
2. Execute

This might initially sound banal - but here's the subtlety:

From time to time, in the thick of product development, we have decided to trade off a little innovation from a feature's original conception in the name of better execution - but when we subtract a little innovation, we simultaneously raise the bar for successful execution - a 'me too' feature needs to be really kick-ass to move the needle, but an innovative feature can be a little rough around the edges.

Sometimes when we attempt to cut execution risk, we are actually increasing the odds against us. Anecdotally, it is pretty common to hear experienced people say: 'In hindsight, I should have taken bigger risks'

Good ideas are cheap - and you can use them to buy yourself a discount on the expensive/difficult stuff - superior execution.

President's Day Shopping Deals

Whether you will be celebrating the holiday on Monday or not, here's a list of Judy's Book's President's Day deals, coupons and sales going on this weekend. Happy Shopping!

Get your hands dirty

Dave recently sent around this blog post about linkbaiting. It's a very worthwhile read for bloggers and link baiters or anyone dabling in the social media space. Hagans provides lengthy suggestions on how to promote your content and be found online and he doesn't try to suggest that any of this is easy. It's about a combination of strong title, well packaged content and smart promotion. All of this requires time and effort-there's no magic bullet here.

Similarly we've learned the hard way that in order to improve content quality on the deals site we are going to have to roll up our sleeves and make some changes to our current processes. Here's what we know so far:

1. Work with the tools you've got 

Example: Currently we aren't able to delete deal member accounts (it's on the roadmap) but from time to time we have self-promoting or non-deal content posted to our site. Our non-dev solution is to utilize our flagging feature and expire any deals that violate any of our terms of use. It's not perfect but it gets the job done in the short term. 

2. Fresh content is important

Example: Traffic ebbs and flows and so does the freshness of your content. We've created a content moderator role at Judy's Book so that we can be sure to monitor our content on a daily basis. If we find that our apparel category is stale, we can then reach out to one of our deal editors to add some content or vote on some new deals to ensure vibrancy on the site.   

3. Quality first, revenue second

Example:  At times there are content categories for which we have little to no strong data. Instead of having an empty set problem, we've pushed our deal editors to find unique deal content that might not generate any revenue but we hope will generate repeat customers in the long run

We're looking at pageviews, repeat visits and total number of clicks to track our content management progress--we'll keep you posted on the results in the coming weeks.   

Flower deals on Valentine's Day

When we launched the floral guide on 1/15, it was our understanding after many phone calls with merchants that the best time to buy roses for the holiday is in February when florists publish many deals. Well it's February and there are many deals out there however the base price on flowers has risen by 20-25% which negates most of these so called "deals". We've kept the "before" prices on our site so you can see the big difference but note to Valentine's flower buyers: early bird definitely gets the worm (and by early we mean before February 1).

Valentine's Day Updates

For those of you looking for the very best deal on flowers for Valentine's day, we will be updating our guide with new prices and deals so be sure to check back early next week!

cluttered memory & active mind

by Matt Johnson

This is a list of articles and blog posts that i have emailed around the judysbook office and imposed upon my coworkers
over the 14 or so months that i have been here.

some are funny, some pertinent, some insightful, and some even have to do with judysbook.

http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/for-relaxing-times-make-it-suntory-time/
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008124.html
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6286392&id=oAAHAAAAEBAJ&dq=hitch+cover+bottle+opener
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003463598_myspace06.html
http://www.revenews.com/jamiebirch/2006/11/bargainbettycom_and_msn_a_new.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/science/09gene.html
http://mashable.com/2006/11/02/mypicklist-beta-2-launches-now-with-more-myspace/
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/saving-money/find-coupons-for-online-stores-with-retailmenot-211067.php
http://www.revenews.com/davidlewis/archives/002393.html
http://venturebeat.com/2006/10/12/cat-cloning-company-shuts-down/#more-2166
http://www.simplekindoflife.com/
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/2006/10/social_local_search_sites_grow.html
http://www.internet-wizard.net/
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/09/online_reviews.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003236878_starbucks31.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003230767_btangielist28.html
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/07/the_ultimate_mo.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/opinion/09orlow.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com/2006/04/seattle_based_j.html
http://www.dangoldstein.com/dsn/archives/2006/03/malcolm_gladwel_1.html

i just heard someone described as having an "active mind and cluttered memory", i hope someone describes me that way some time.

Grocery coupons go live

Today we added grocery coupons to our site through a partnership with Boodle. A quick and easy way to search for coupons on your favorite brands is to use our coupon finder. Just type in the brand or type of product you are looking for to find out if we have a coupon for you.

We decided to launch grocery after hearing many requests from customers that this was a category they'd like to see. Now that it's live, be sure to tell us what you think and while you're at it, let us know of other categories that you'd like to see Judy's Book support.

Introducing Tara

by Tara Mulcahy

I am the new marketing girl here making it an even four girls on the Judy’s Book team. Going from an office dominated by women to an office full of boys has been quite a change, but very fun.

A little bit about me, I am an avid shopper, my mom put me on her Nordstrom account when I was 5 months old and I guess it stuck (although now sadly my account has just my name on it). My love for shopping is what drew me to Judy’s Book as shopping only gets better when you get a great deal. I am native to Seattle, love the rain and don’t miss the sun all that often. Looking forward to my time here!