2011 was a great year for Scholaric. On a post nearly a year ago, I outlined my goals for 2011. Here are the results.
1) An LLC operates Scholaric
Green. I formed Positive Slope LLC as the company behind Scholaric.
2) Customers happily pay for the service
Green. I added payment capability, and we launched for payment in April 2011. Now I hear from customers how much they like Scholaric for their homeschool.
3) Redesign of scholaric.com
Red. Still is ugly.
4) Potential customers engaged with product tour video and share with others
Red. No video product tour. Did one video and hated it. Was a lot of work and I didn't like the finished product. If you are interested though you can find it here.
5) New marketing page with better descriptions, video link, testimonials
Yellow. Marketing page is still bad, but it is less bad than a year ago. No video, no testimonials.
6) New users given hand's on training during trial period
Red. This was intended to be training videos sent to you during your trial period.
7) Lessons easily planned for and shared between multiple students
Green. Lesson sharing was the most requested feature and was added in August 2011.
8) A gradebook view of lessons
Green. Gradebook now shows how your grade is calculated and how it changes over time.
9) Improved tracking of core hours, home hours, hours by subject
Green. I added goal tracking, which also shows attendance.
10) Community is giving so much feedback, I have to work hard to read it all
Yellow. I do get lots of feedback, many suggestions for improvement and some people just saying thanks. Its all nice to hear, but I'm not yet overwhelmed by it. Compared to a year ago, it has been a great improvement. I now have a much better understanding of your needs.
11) Meet 100 homeschoolers by attending homeschool conferences as a vendor
Yellow. I attended one homeschool conference, but met far less than 100 homeschoolers there.
In total, of 11 goals: 5 green, 3 yellow, 3 red. I knew these were ambitious when I made them. More important than goal statuses, when I got requests from users which I felt were important, I chose to take care of customers rather than meet my goals.
Thanks to everyone who helped make 2011 a great year. Keep your eyes here to see my goals for 2012.
Happy Planning