I’ve owned and operated a hookah website for over 6 years now. It was a simple blog back in the day. Today Buy Hookah is a business for itself and a fairly large online store. I run it with the help of three employees.

On average I’ve been rolling one major upgrade every year on the website including software, feature, and graphic upgrades. During the past two weeks I’d been working on a new (slightly changed) design upgrade for a more fresh and web 2.0 feel.

The new design has been getting great reviews from our customers and my fellow webmasters. Here are some of my favorite new features that it incorporates:

• Fresh web 2.0 design with spring/summer feel
• Featured area on the homepage where we can highlight certain products or promotions
• Higher conversion rate for email sign ups. We’ve already seen a great improvement in number of people signing up to receive our weekly newsletter by clicking on the top right 5% discount link.
• Easier navigation to browse the different part of the site as well as the product categories
• Better highlighting of our site’s content including the hookah wiki, hookah bars, blog, and more.
• I’m hoping that we’ll see a considerable improvement in the eCommerce conversion too. Only time can tell though.

Here are the before and after pictures of the design:

Finding the right team is probably the hardest (and most important) part of the any project. For this project I need a team of programmer(s), designer(s), and marketer(s).

• Programmer (Rob): I knew who I was going to work with on this project long before the start of it. I’ve been working with the same programmer for few years. I believe in his skills and most importantly trust him. That was an easy decision for me. At this point I’m paying him on an hourly base. The hope is to have him work on the project full time within the next 6 to 9 months as business grows.
• Designer: I wanted a local designer for this project. I want to be able to meet with my designer on a weekly basis and give him/her feedback. The print design portion of this project is so vital that I can’t work with someone that I’ve only met online. So I posted an ad on Craiglist for local web and print graphic designers in Dallas area. I was overwhelmed by the number of applicants. I’m still in process of going through them and interviewing those who are more qualified. My goal is to hire one web graphics specialist and one print specialist. However the print designs would have to wait until the website is done.
• Marketing Guru: So far I haven’t looked hard to find a marketer. The marketing work right now is small (and not-complicated) enough that I can handle it myself. Maybe after a few month I’ll post an ad on Cragislist for a professional marketer.
• Board of Advisers: Also still working on it. I’m hoping to find at least 2 local successful entrepreneurs that can listen to our business plans and give us (free) advice.

For hiring the designer I decided to interview about 5 to 10 applicants and then give them small project on my other websites. I would still pay them $30 an hour for the time they spend on the project. However this way I get to work with them on a small project before bringing them as part of the new business.

In my next week’s post I will reveal the final team members and write about the interview processes.

……. drum rolls …….

I have started a new project to be my largest online project yet. In fact at some point in future it will become a full blown business (hopefully). I won’t be able to talk about the specifics of the business until it is actually launched. However until then I will post at least one update every week on the process of finding the right team, developing business plan for it, raising funds, hiring employees, and more.

Here are some facts about the business that I can publish at this point:

• Its a B2B (business to business) model. We will be catering to businesses rather than individuals.
• Our team will include 3 dedicated members (programmer, marketer, and myself) with at least 3 contractors working on the design of the web and print media as well as building databases.
• The planned launch date is May 1st.
• The business plan is already over 100 pages and improving. It includes statistics, marketing plans, sales plans, development plans, and much more

Look for my next post on the process of finding the right team and hiring the best employees.

Today I went through my monthly subscriptions and cut cost by canceling a number of them:

• Audible monthly membership ($14.95):  I still have three or four audio books that I haven’t listened to. I also wouldn’t mind going back and listening to some of the old audio books that I have.
• SEOMoz monthly PRO membership ($100.00): I’ve been a PRO member at SEOMoz for three months. They have great tools available to PRO members only and very neat ways to track your competitors. I’ve been saving the reports, taking notes, and monitoring my competitors. I think I can spend few months without PRO membership while implementing new features in my sites.
• CrazyEgg membership ($19.00): CrazyEgg allows you to see where your visitors click and/or hover their mouse over on any particular page of your website. Again, I’ve been running tests for a few months now and am ready to start taking action on the results.
• LinkedIn ($24.95): I was a premium member at Linkedin which was pretty neat. I wasn’t really looking for new job though. I was just using it to find and view interesting entrepreneur’s profiles and message them.

At this point I need all the cash I can get for a new project that I’m launching on June 1st, 2011. Its going to be my largest website yet.