One week in: 4,300 views, four proposals, 39 changes

Leland Fiegel's LinkedIn post announcing that LFW is open for business after three years at Stand Together, with 120 reactions, 25 comments, 6 reposts and 4,337 impressions. — The announcement on LinkedIn, four days in.

On Monday I told LinkedIn I was leaving Stand Together to start a web agency. A lot of you were kind about it.

120 reactions, 25 comments, 6 reposts and more than 4,300 views in four days. Thank you.

Every firm starts with the people who already know your work, and you showed up. Here is what happened in the rest of the week.

What LFW is, in one breath

LFW is a web agency for organizations that cannot afford a broken website: governments, associations, embassies and chambers of commerce.

We look after the site month to month. Updates, security, accessibility, hosting, and whatever the communications team needs that week.

Four proposals

Most of the week was business development, which is a polite way of saying I wrote proposals.

Four went out. I don't name or describe a buyer while it is deciding.

Some ask for a list of past government clients. Each proposal answers with my own record and the work LFW has built.

What I can show is my own record: running more than 40 public websites for Arlington County, Virginia, and building on WordPress since 2007.

We will see if that counts.

A desk in Rosslyn

I also acquainted myself with the WeWork in Rosslyn, where I work on occasion. Friendly, welcoming staff.

On Thursday the snack bar was wonderful: red and green apples, Nutella, chocolate chips, and more. Morale is high.

A round table set with sliced red and green apples, jars of chocolate chips, candy and nuts, and bottles of chocolate and caramel sauce, around a tree planter in the WeWork Rosslyn lounge. — The apple bar at WeWork Rosslyn, Thursday.

Better search on LFW.com

Between proposals, I kept improving LFW.com itself.

LFW.com has a new search. Press Ctrl K on any page and try it. It forgives typos and answers a question like "pricing" directly.

The LFW.com search dialog with the query pricing: a direct answer that LFW does not publish prices, with a Request a quote link, above eleven results. — Searching LFW.com for "pricing".

A monitor that cries wolf less

LFW Monitor watches a website for problems and tells you before a visitor does.

This week it stopped flagging Spanish and French pages as misspelled English, which it should never have done in the first place. It also reports a site-wide problem once instead of fifty times.

Monitor’s coverage panel separates URL inventory counts from browser measurements and explicitly identifies an incomplete inventory. — Monitor's coverage panel states what was measured and flags an incomplete inventory.

Next week, and a favor

Next week: two more proposals, and more tinkering.

If you know an organization whose website has nobody looking after it, I would be grateful for the introduction.

Talk to us, or run the free audit on any site and see what it finds.

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