Reeling in the LAB Unleashed

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I am finally severing the ties between my personal blog and my venture - RunMyErrand.com.  it is time.  As noted in the November 2008 entry, Remy.  Unleashed, I hijacked my personal blog for almost a year, and wrote mostly about RunMyErrand.  This completely worked, because this company is all I eat, sleep, drink, and breathe.  The very exciting thing about now is …. there are many more people involved with RunMyErrand, and I want to give them a way to share their voice and stories with you as well.

Check out the new RunMyErrand Community Blog, feeding into the main RunMyErrand.com website!  You’ll hear from Senders, Runner, Interns, Advisors, Employees, and other contributors.  LAB Unleashed will be back to more of a personal perspective on life, business, happenings, and of course, our large yellow lab, Kobe. 

Better than FREE: your first errand on us!

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We are not joking.  Big promotion this week … your first errand on us.  Its better than FREE.  FREE would be if we were breaking even on your errand posting, but what we are actually offering you is to completely PAY for your first errand …. just keep it under $10 total!  You might be surprised what you can get done for $10 …. a lot of things!  Take a browse here.  And … if you don’t want to post your own errand, feel free to get in on one of our "Runs"!

To get your free errand, all you have to do is create an account and get sending.  That’s it.  No special codes.  No special hoops to jump through.  We’ve kept it as simple as possible.  All we ask is that you give it a try and we welcome feedback!  We ended up implementing the Kampyle feedback form, so it’s easy to drop us a note, from any page, using that tool.

Happy Sending!

Feature Alert: Headed to _________. Need anything?

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This is a major feature that has been in the works for some time.  The "Runs" feature has been part of the original RUNmyERRAND vision from the beginning and we are thrilled to finally launch it this week!  Just as Senders can post errands, Runners can now post "Runs" … its kind of a mirror image of the current site.  Runs are generated by Runners and are planned trips.  We anticipate popular runs including trips to Target, IKEA, Costco, Goodwill, etc, but a Runner is free to post a Run to wherever they would like.  It is all part of our "errand sharing" model, which maximizes Runner’s profits, minimizes Sender’s expenses, and certainly has its green benefits!

We are starting the Runs feature this week with a trial group of Runners.  We don’t want to overload the system with an influx of Runs, so there will be handful of planned Runs generated by the same individuals for now.  Its nice to have a group of Runners that are really experienced on the site, and who I can immediately turn to when launching a feature like this.  They were eager to jump on board and give it a test drive.

Right now we’ve got a Target Run, Home Depot Run, and Wholefood Run open.  Senders can make requests, include a list of items, their location for delivery, and a Runner fee.  Just the same as a regular errand, a Runner can also counteroffer this fee, and Senders can pay with cash on delivery or reimburse their Runner with credit online.  We (the Ruby Ninja) leveraged a lot of the errand model code to implement this request concept, which makes it familiar to the end user with the same robust feature set. 

Just looking at these runs, I can already think of a few things I need from these places … and that’s the beauty of it.  We all need reminders, and if we know someone is making the trip anyway, why not get in on it!

Errands with Good Stories

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Over the past 7 months we have some pretty good stories come out of RUNmyERRAND.  When I started this I of course anticipated the dry cleaning runs and clothing donation pick ups, but what was really fun to realize, is that every errand has its own story, and some of the stories behind these errands are just too good not to share.

Story #1 - "Lost cellphone, in need of chicken salad"
It was late on Sunday afternoon, when I saw the errand posting come through the system.  A woman had left her cellphone at a farm in Beverly, MA, and they closed at 4:00pm that day.  She needed a Runner to drive up to Beverly, pick up the cellphone she had left, and then also requested a tub of chicken salad.  She got her cellphone and chicken salad that night, and I’m sure it was a relief to start the week with her cellphone in hand … not to mention chicken salad in the frig!

Story #2 - "Flower delivery from the Caribbean"
At the time, zipcodes outside of the greater Boston area would not allow you to sign up on RUNmyERRAND.com.  I got a message from Dalton W, who lives on his gorgeous sail boat in the Caribbean, named Quietly.  He asked for help getting signed up and I obliged (we are now actually open in all zipcodes, but only running errands in Boston … for now).  So the next day, Dalton posted a flower delivery errand.  He wanted a runner to go to the local market, pick out a fresh bouquet of flowers, and deliver them to a door step in Beacon Hill.  He paid $7 for the flowers and $7 for the delivery fee … $14 total.  I think that definitely beats 1800FLOWERS (I’m sure the flowers did too) and he was supporting the local neighborhood shop.  Love it! 

Story #3 - "Get out and shop!"
Everyone loves to shop at IKEA … its the actual getting there and getting everything home that can be challenging.  They do offer store delivery starting at $99, but in this story, Robert M who is "… retired, 77 years, living at home and doing for myself as able.", saved himself some money, enjoyed a round trip ride, and wonderful shopping company from our Runner Lola A.  Two furniture kits were picked up, loaded up, and dropped off with Robert at his apartment in Malden Center.

Those are just a few of my favorite errand stories so far, but I’m sure there are all kinds of good stories in this bunch: http://runmyerrand.com/errands/allactivity?type=completed.  Share your stories with us … we want to hear more of them!

Community Based. Crowdsource Driven.

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We are running LIVE with the newly relaunched and redesigned RUNmyERRAND.com … Check us out!  Lots of work went into this, and I think it was all well worth it.  We are now ready to really start cranking on the business.  I’ve been swamped in Ruby and CSS code over the last two weeks, with a big push over the weekend to get everything in order.  It will be nice to shift my focus back to the business now.

The last piece of our redesign is our logo - we need a new one, to match our hip new site!  As a young startup, with bootstrapping roots, we engaged in a crowdsourcing model for logo design.  The site, 99designs.com, allows you to post a contest with a prize, and then any designer can log on and make their submissions.  We had almost 180 entries in 7 days, which gave us a fantastic range of options to choose from.  We picked the top 5 designs and created a short survey - please participate and give us your option - Click Here to take survey.

I am a big fan of this crowdsourcing model, especially since we are a community based platform ourselves.  I did a poll when we were thinking about a name change, and had an overwhelming response to keep RUNmyERRAND.com.  Now, as we establish our logo, I’m interested to know what the community is thinking.  I really enjoy getting the feedback and realize that the business can only benefit from keeping our community involved and engaged.  Communities are strongest when everyone plays a role. - well stated from the April issue of Harvard Business Review.

UI Refresh: Your Sneak Peak

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We are almost there … consider this your sneak peak!  As previously mentioned, one of the things I am most excited to be working on right now is what I am calling our User Interface Refresh.  I’ve been bouncing around a lot of terms - redesign, just seems too heavy, overhaul - sounds like a big mess, but refresh seems to fit.  We are re-skinning the current site, updating the logo, graphics, and icons.  The collective "we" being our "User Advocate", Eric Sagalyn, and our original design guru, Brian Thomas.  This is going to go a long way as far as usability is concerned.  We are definitely simplifying, removing the noise, and reassessing what is important.  We will be cranking the rest of the week to pin down the design, swap out icons, and get all the interior pages layed out properly. 

As I complete this refresh, I would like to integrate a feature that I am starting to see everywhere - the "Give Feedback" widgets.  These widgets are developed by third parties and are designed to remain sticky no matter what page of a website you are looking at.  On any given page, users can click the feedback widget button, and provide their opinions, ideas, frustrations, and general comments about your website.  I’ve researched GetSatisfaction, Kampyle, and UserVoice.  They all have this feedback widget I am talking about, but beyond that, they are very different and I’m not sure how robust I want to go right now.  To start, I am leaning towards Kampyle for its easy Feedback integration widget and analytic tracking.  The piece of the feedback form that sets them apart is the very first question they ask you: "How do you feel about this site?" and you have choose one of these little faces:

This was really compelling to me, because I not only want to get my customer’s feedback, I really want to know how they are *feeling* about the experience overall.  GetSatisfaction has some nice additional features, where users can rate on a scale of 1 to 10 whether they would recommend the site to their friend, and UserVoice had a really cool way to vote suggestions up and down in Digg style.  All seem to fill the market in different ways, and it is tough to decide between them.  If there are other suggestions or recommendations on other feedback widgets I should take a look at, I am all ears!

Post errands from your Blackberry? No problem!

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It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  It doesn’t even feel like weeks … its feeling more like months, but everything is moving so quickly.  Not sure that makes any sense at all, but I am sure that there is probably someone out there that can relate!  Please give me a shout-out! :) 

One of things I am most excited about for RUNmyERRAND is the UI overhaul we have got up our sleeves.  We are working with a brilliant graphic designer, a self proclaimed "user advocate", named Eric Sagalyn.  Super talented and works quickly, which is important for our situation.  We got our first peak at the new design late last week and it is just so thrilling!!  Finally, my true vision for the site is going to start shining through.  As a software engineer, my expertise is in back end coding, algorithms, and feature development.  I can do the UI, I’ve learned a lot of CSS, but I certainly am not a self-proclaimed "user advocate"!  I did what I could while I was bootstrapping to get the first cut of the website launched, to prove the model, and now I can finally work with an expert to convey the magnificent beast that is in my head.  So keep an eye out for an exciting new look and feel coming soon!

The other great feature that I believe is going to add a ton of value, is our new Blackberry Application.  The code was merged late last night, so this is the first day it has been live.  Take a peak … all feedback is welcome!  We did a ton of testing on different simulators, but would love to hear how everything is looking on the real devices.  We tried to just make everything really simple, not graphic heavy, so that it will load fast and be useful.  Just like the iPhone you can: Login, Post an Errand, Run and Errand, Purchase Credits, and Mark Errand Complete.  All the basic, most important functionality is there.

In the words of Finding Nemo … "just keep swimming" ….


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