Looking Back at 2009

When we – as a company, young(ish) startup & team – reflect on the past year, I’m sure we’d all agree that 2009 has been extremely hard work, but that we’ve been greatly blessed at the same time (which means all those late nights answering support queries has paid off). So as we close out the year now, we thought that it would be great to actually reflect on the past year via the blog, as then we could recap on all of the highlights with those that matter most: all of you guys & girls!

But where to start? Since we pride ourselves on being a close-knit team (and have as a result developed real friendships, which result in late night discussions and sharing a few beers), I think we’ll start by looking at the things that influenced our team the most…

The WooTeam

When I asked Magnus & Mark about their highlights for 2009, both of them seemed to agree that our trip to FOWD in London was really significant, as that was the first time ever that we had hooked up as a team (after working together for more than a year). Meeting up with Ryan Carson was obviously another great highlight on that trip and the chat over a Starbucks coffee was awesome indeed!

Another social highlight, was Magnus & Mark’s recent trip to Cape Town, where the whole WooTeam met up again. The “company” weekend away to Oubaai is something we’ll definitely repeat (especially the drinks & sunsets). Heck – we even managed to pretend to be models and had a little promotional photoshoot of the team…

If we had to consider the immense growth of the company in the last year, the first evidence would be the extent to which the team has grown. At the turn of the year, it was only myself, Magnus, Mark & Tiago onboard, but 12 months later, we’ve doubled in size. Cobus & Fox’ recruitment from Radiiate in March was an integral reason in us maintaining our momentum at the beginning of the year, whilst more recently – Jeff & Kirstin have joined us to sustain that growth & the demand on our time.

The Website

To say that the website absolutely exploded would be an understatement in its truest form.

From a traffic perspective, we managed to more than double our monthly pageviews from about 800 000 in January to more than 2.3m in December. This means that our analytics will show approximately 4m unique visitors & more than 18m pageviews for 2009 (this graph showcasing the immense growth within context). The traffic also necessitated a move to a rocking new server, as all of you lot continued to pound our site with numerous visits!

If we had to look into why the site received so much traffic during 2009, it would probably be down to the regular X-for-1 promotions we were running… But then again, we published just about 150 blog posts this year (that’s almost a post every 2nd day) and that would probably be a good indicator of the dynamism & regularity of your visits here. In addition, we can probably point at the first-ever Showdown for sending about 2m pageviews through to the site during it’s first season (another feature we’ll be bringing back next year).

Another individual marketing campaign that got a truckload of attention was the WOOBS Campaign which we hosted in October, in aid of breast cancer awareness (for which we raised more than $5000 USD. This is also definitely something that we’d like to repeat in 2010!

WOO2

We definitely couldn’t forget the blood, sweat & tears that went into the creation of – the lovingly titled – WOO2. We had spent around 3 / 4 months developing & redesigning WOO2 and a quick look at our analytics would tell you that we experienced a massive bump in traffic since the launch. We’d also like to think that the site has been even more awesome since we redesigned; so WOO2 is most definitely one of our most important highlights of 2009.

The Themes

We couldn’t reflect on 2009, without having a look at all 36 new, awesome themes that we released during the year. Having collaborated with a few extremely talented designers (and being well-supported by our new design initiative), I think we released some really top-notch themes and the milestone of releasing our 50th theme, is obviously something that we’re extremely proud of!

In terms of individual themes, Coffee Break has become our fastest-selling theme ever, whilst it was extremely well-supported by firm fan favourites – The Station & Aperture. Then we can also include an individual mention for some other really popular themes during the last year: Suit & Tie, Headlines, The Daily Edition & Therapy. Be sure you can expect much more of the same (albeit, always better) in the new year.

On the development front, the integration of the WooFramework was a massive step forward for us in terms of improving our themes and making the most awesome features & functionality, standard across our complete range. Along with the WooFramework, we also spent quite a few weeks localizing all of our themes; another move which has greatly paid off, considering the fact that our themes are now available in multiple languages.

A Special Thanks

After everything that we’ve said above, we’d just like to thank every one of you that have been part of our journey in one way or another. Without you guys & girls, we would not have had a reason to pursue these milestones & highlights; plus it definitely would not have been as much fun!

We hope you’ll back on the WooTrain in the new year, when we promise to deliver even more awesomeness than before. We’ve set the bar high in 2009, but we’re an ambitious bunch; so you can expect us to deliver the goods in 2010…