2016 Rearview Mirror Review

Here we are at the end of a very tumultuous 2016. I hope you and yours are getting ready to have the best year ever. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to take stock of the past year and review all you’ve accomplished.

I was curious to see how this year compared to 2015 on a number of levels. Here’s how things turned out:

2016 Blog Traffic

I made a conscious effort to keep maryshaw.net updated more frequently this year. I also put a lot of work into on site SEO. As a result, my overall traffic and engagement increased.

There are certainly plenty of sites with much better traffic numbers than mine, but I’m pleased with the results:

• Over 8600 users (+30%)
• Over 20,000 page views (+57%)
• ~2 pages per session (+12%)
• 1:30 Average duration (+66%)
• 75% bounce rate (-4%)

Some Things That Worked

• Earned a healthy 5 figures working less than 20 hours a week with just a handful of clients (I’m a mom so I choose to work part-time).
• Earned enough affiliate income to cover my website hosting and email marketing costs
• Worked directly with clients vs. subcontracting to agencies
• Doubled down on my email list after switching to ConvertKit – grew it from 3 to almost 300 subscribers! If you’d like to subscribe you can signup here
• Still on the front page of Google when you search “UX designer CT”
• Conducted 78 UX coaching calls
• Got featured on the CareerFoundry blog
• Started teaching for DesignLab
• Presented a webinar on UX design for Copyblogger
• Spoke to Ugurus 10k Mastermind group and attended their 10k Denver event
• Got invited to speak in Portland at CHIFOO
• Took my family to Florida for Spring break
• Learned Sketch 3 (I’ll be switching from Omnigraffle soon)
• Migrated my website to WPEngine
• Switched to Teamwork for client project management – it’s great!

Some Things That Didn’t Work

• My book project stalled out – there wasn’t enough interest to move forward with The UX Strategy Book. I want to make sure anything I produce truly resonates with my audience before I create it, so I’ll keep asking you for suggestions :)
• A recurring revenue program with a new client got postponed
• I had to postpone my website redesign due to client and family commitments
• My first webinar was a bust. Eight people responded, but no one showed up. I’m not crazy about the pressure of being live online anyway, so I’m not sure if I’ll try that again.

Goals for 2017

Here’s what I plan to achieve in 2017:

• Continue consulting with corporate clients and startups
• Grow my email list to 1000 subscribers
• Expand my UX coaching program
• Release my first educational product (with your help!)
• Design and develop my first iPhone App in the App Store
• Update my portfolio
• Develop recurring revenue with existing clients
• Redesign maryshaw.net and get the bounce rate below 50%

Over To You

I hope this gives you some ideas for things you can accomplish in 2017. What are your plans for next year and beyond? Write them down and then get busy executing them.

As always, thanks for reading. Best wishes to you and yours for a very Happy New Year!