Site review: Swifto.com

Swifto - errands run, lickety-split

Elad over at Swifto asked me to review their site. Swifto is a cool service: You post a small errand or task you need performed, and they match you up with someone who can get it done. It’s only in NYC (damn) or I would’ve tested it out.

This is a small sampling of the kind of review we typically do in a Portent 10Things gig. If you’re interested, have a look.

Good stuff: Nice!

The Portent responsinator gave your site an A+! W00T! That means you’re delivering the right server response codes for ‘not found’, redirection and other server accidents, should they occur.

Woo hoo! An A+

Your site’s got no canonicalization problems I could find. Even better.

And, your site’s pretty speedy. It’s on the Nginx web server, so I’d expect no less. One note: Turn on GZIP compression if you can. It’ll speed things up even more.

1: Put the blog on the site

It makes me sad that I still have to write this. Depressed, actually. Maybe even despondent.

A subdomain? I weep for us all.

If your blog is on a subdomain, as it is in this case—blog.swifto.com—then any authority/relevance gained by the blog stays on the blog. It doesn’t filter back ‘up’ to the main site.

I’ve said this all before, many times. Read one version here. The rules haven’t changed. Nor will they ever.

You guys are clearly damned smart – you build this whole Swifto thingamabob. And you got an Nginx server running without a nervous breakdown. You can probably figure out how to install a copy of WordPress in a /blog subfolder on your server.

Go do it. Now. I’ll still be here when you’re done.

GO.

Think about ‘errands’

Don’t worry about specific keywords and rankings (yet). But you should definitely consider your basic value proposition, and where the overlaps into common terms and phrases.

For example: If you think ‘errands’ is something on my mind when I use Swifto, then try to have the word ‘errands’ somewhere in the title, and on the home page.

The big one: User generated content

Eventually, you’ll want more content on your site. It’s kind of inevitable. If I search for ‘someone to get me a battery cable for my car in NYC’ you’ll want to be there.

Your service is a user-generated content (UGC) goldmine! Remove names and locations, then list every request in a public directory. Group them by type, if you have that ability: Car-related, pick-ups, drop-offs, services, yardwork, etc.

Then you can let folks know they can sign up to get the full info and earn cash by completing tasks.

The UGC will draw in potential workers as well as potential users, via search. It should give you the beginnings of a growth funnel that you can exploit over the long term.

All you really have to do is make the ‘need’ sectio of the site browse-able.

I can’t think of any major privacy or technology issues with this, as long as you anonymize it all.

Oh, and be sure all of this content is navigable via clicks, not via a search form. Search engines can’t fill out a form. So the whole directory will have to be browseable.

Other stuff

Once you do all this, there’s more. Some ideas include:

• Optimizing the blog around specific phrases/terms.
• Improving share-ability.
• Linking from the blog back to Swifto.

There’s more, too, but I gotta make a living somehow.

Seriously, I hope this helps, Swiftopians. You have a great business idea.

Oh yeah…

Site reviews are back! If you’ve got one, send it to me. The only rules are:

1. No crying. If you send it, I get to review it, and post the review, without edits.
2. It has to be your site.
3. I reserve the right to choose what I review.
4. Any funny stuff, and I humiliate you in front of my dozens of readers.