Moonfruit Lounge - Moonfruit

The legal curse of running a small business in London

Clare — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:27:00 +0100

Joe White is co-founder and COO of website builder Moonfruit. He's grown the business across a decade to an international company with Silicon-Valley-based backing. But White has had his fair share of headaches along the way. Here are his tips for small businesses looking to avoid legal hot water.

Running a small business in London can be a battle at the best of times, particularly in terms of managing your own time as it is one of the most valuable resources in the company. You need things done correctly, you can't do them all yourself, and you don't want to be distracted by things you shouldn't have to worry about. I should know, as COO/CFO of the number one hosted website builder in the UK, Moonfruit.com. We're a DIY website builder for consumers and small businesses to share their passions online, based in central London. Legislation affecting your business can seem like one of those extra things you just shouldn't have to worry about, but it is real and does matter. Some of it is a real pain, some of it is good discipline with real benefits. The main kinds of legislation that affect the running of your business are:

Employment law: essentially, this concerns the relationship between you and your employees. From payment rights to varying types of discrimination.

Consumer protection: this looks to ensure that consumers are treated fairly by businesses and to ensure product quality is satisfactory.

Tax and regulations: anything from payroll taxes, VAT and corporation tax, to filing accounts and statutory documents.

It's your responsibility as a business owner to make sure you take notice of all these things. But this doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself. My first piece of advice would be to make sure you have an accountant who is looking out for the day to day stuff, particularly payroll and taxes. The revenue aren't particularly sympathetic to people who pay incorrect tax and a competent accountant will make sure you do. It is an additonal outgoing but - trust me - accountants are worth their weight in gold.

On the legal and employment side of things, treat people fairly, with respect, and you'll be okay in most cases. If you find yourself in a tricky situation, then take advice. There are several business services that will offer standard contracts and process documents (e.g. dismissal), so you can use these to save money. Smarta offers a business software bundle that includes legal and accounting software, so that can be helpful here. Most importantly, don't be afraid to do something for fear of regulation or concern that it's all too complicated. Seek to do things the right way and take advice if you're unsure, but don't get paralysed. Most government agencies want you to succeed and will work with you to help you comply, even if it's tidying up after the event! Some laws can even lead to a benefit for your business. Understanding that EU law requires us to give customers a 60 day right of refund for digital purchases has allowed us to promote this effective 60 day money back guarantee to our customers - to their delight! So it's not all bad :-)

Further reading: FREE Business Briefing: How to interview; The Comply or Die ebook

This article first appeared in SMARTA See it here

Real Business: Interview with Wendy Tan White

Clare — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:26:00 +0100

Moonfruit's Wendy Tan White on losing it all, getting it back, and buying £795 Louboutins.

Name: Wendy Tan-White

Age: 40

Company: Website builder Moonfruit

Turnover: $6m

First job: I was sponsored by Ford during my computer science degree at Imperial College. I worked each summer at one of the Ford offices in Essex. I ended up programming assembly line control systems using green screen dumb terminals connected to their mainframes. Far cry from the mobile, social, e-commerce tools we build SMBs in today's internet, cloud server powered world!

Dream job: I did a design MA at Central Saint Martins while I was on maternity. Would love to be a set designer using smart textiles to create sensory experiences which blow your mind. ;)

Car: The joys of young kids in London. Toyota Corolla Verso (smallest of the 7 seaters!) __ Economy, business or first-class__: Premium economy. Can work comfortably but don't feel like I'm burning our hard-earned cash!

Most extravagant purchase: Beautiful, snakeskin, 5" Louboutins – £795 (technically a present from my husband!)

Most played song on your iPod: "Rolling in the deep" by Adele

Best business book: Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore (an oldie but still very pertinent for marketing technology products)

Worst business moment. NASDAQ crash in 2001. Making 58 staff redundant, many friends, some family.

Proudest business moment: Raising $2.25m in September 2011 because of Moonfruit's accelerating growth with my husband, Joe White and best friend, Eirik Pettersen.

Business mentor: Richard Duvall, the launch director of Egg and co-founder of Zopa.com. (He head hunted me into Egg, supported my move into being an entrepreneur, but sadly passed away few years ago.)

Next big thing: Angel investor. Particularly supporting new businesses and women entrepreneurs in male and female teams. There has never been a better time for women led-businesses in terms of investment and understanding market opportunities. The majority of purchasers and social media users online are women.

Startup Donut: Wendy Tan White - the website pioneer

Clare — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:18:00 +0100

Some call her the UK’s first lady of technology. She’s also CEO and co-founder of Moonfruit, the trading name of DIY website construction tool SiteMaker, which helps those with limited knowledge to create professional-looking websites. Some 3.6m such sites have been created using Moonfruit’s software since it launched in 2000. But as Wendy Tan-White explains to Mark Williams, sometimes you’ve got to fail to succeed

Perhaps it was inevitable that Wendy Tan-White would end up working in IT. Born in Salford in 1970, her family moved to Cumbernauld in Scotland with her dad’s job when she was two. “Few people worked with computers then, dad was ahead of his time. We moved to Reading when I was nine, dad got a job with Racal, which became Vodafone. Mum did a degree and ended up working in IT, too.”

At grammar school the teachers filled pupils with self-belief, Wendy recalls. After A-levels, she did a degree in computer science at Imperial College in London. “I went from an all-girl school to a course where only seven out of 120 students were female. I was living in halls in South Kensington, it was all very new and exciting. At Imperial we were using state-of-the-art equipment ― and the internet ― it was only 1989.”

To read more of this article click here:

SKY NEWS: New Tech Bubble

Clare — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:22:00 +0100

Recent news of LinkedIn’s increased value to over $3bn has raised alarm bells regarding overvalued tech companies. With the likes of Groupon’s estimated worth of $15bn, there are concerns that we’re in a tech bubble all too familiar to the one a decade ago, whereby investments shoot up from non-tech savvy investors to create over-inflated valuations. Guest blogger Wendy Tan White, founder and CEO of Moonfruit.com, comments.

My view is that firstly I don’t necessarily believe LinkedIn is overvalued. They have products in the pipeline that can crystalise more value from their customer base and increase revenues.

With regards to whether we’re in a tech bubble, well a bubble starts when valuations of a business starts to diverge from the underlying true market trend. This happened in 1999 when crazy valuations were happening for companies with no revenue! It's different this time around as companies have real revenues. Groupon is only 2 years old and is already generating $1bn in revenues.

I think it's too early to confirm if there is a bubble, but there are secondary indicators that give me the impression of the early stages of one. For example, the valuations of companies at the early angel investor stages, the valuations on the secondary markets of Facebook and Twitter, and the planned IPOs of these companies, could all point to the makings of a tech bubble.

This can start to bring in investment from wider non-tech investors, and the start of a bandwagon begins. Once Facebook IPOs are announced ostensibly later next year this will fuel investment by those non-tech savvy investors previously mentioned, who will participate in less successful companies at over-inflated valuations.

People point to the Facebook IPO as being the equivalent of the Netscape float in 1995, and the peak of that bubble didn't happen until the end of 2000. We’ve learnt a lot from this cycle and the market information that wasn’t available last time. I think Facebook’s coming IPO will accelerate the cycle, and potentially bring about a peak of investment in the next 2/3 years.

We experienced the first bubble raising VC investment in 1999, and just scraped through the dotcom crash when many didn’t. This time we have real accelerating revenues and are attracting investment for the right reasons – raising $2.25m series A investment in September 2010, and funding from silicon valley-based 500Startups in March 2011. As such, small and medium businesses are paying for our simple, intuitive, design led website builder in droves.

I'm constantly watching to see what part of the cycle we're in and how that affects Moonfruit’s business. But the first priority will always be to run and accelerate a sustainable business, and think about the market valuation second.

For the original article, please click here

New release - 29 September 2009 - New interface, HTML widget, site copy and more...

Joe — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0100

Yeah, it's release time again! Believe it or not we get just as excited as you do at these times. The months of hard work all come together and we get to push new things out to the Moonfruit-osphere. And this one is a biggy too.

So first things first, the new interface. For those of you who didn't see our sneak preview, this is what it looks like.

General edit functions (click to enlarge image).

We're seeing the largest overhaul to the edit environment in the last 5 years as we drag SiteMaker kicking and screaming into the present and pave the way for the future. The long awaited HTML widget is now out of beta, works in all browsers (ooooohh), and opens up libraries of additional content. And you can now copy an entire site too...

New Toolbar (beta)
Some call it SiteMaker5, some call it Moonfruit+, all we know is we call it the New Toolbar. It's been launched as an opt-in beta version, which means it's fully functional, you can choose it, you can use it, but you're not forced to. We're looking for feedback - good and bad (constructive) - so that we can polish it off for a final release at a later stage. But it works and in our testing so far makes things far quicker and easier to do.

To get to it, login to your site and go to 'View' --> 'New Toolbar (beta)'. Your site will reload in the new environment but you can revert to the old style toolbars at any time. The advantages of the new Toolbar are:

Use the full screen browser for editing - you can move edit tools outside the boundary of your site
Zoom in/out while editing - you make your site bigger/smaller to help 'see' it in full glory
Sticky edit tools - the Toolbar remains at the top and the Editor will remain on screen as you scroll up and down
Show off-screen objects - if you drag something off your site (outside the boundary), you can choose to hide or display off screen objects (new under 'view')
Detailed insert menu - more objects can be added in one click, including some new HTML snippets ('Insert' menu)
Quick pages menu - includes quick ways to add pages, copy pages and change page length, plus edit meta data (for search engines) more quickly (see 'Pages' menu)
Links to other services - Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, AdSense can all be viewed without leaving your site (new 'Services' menu)

The major drive for this change was to better organise the features available and create the structure so that we can expand services further in the future. Moonfruit has grown to include so many features over the years, sometimes the most important ones get lost, so this is an opportunity to re-present them for how they are used today. When we started many years ago we built a 'Page editor' whereas today SiteMaker allows the management of your website over its whole lifecycle. From initial build -> monitoring traffic and performance -> developing community -> monetisation -> ongoing updates.

Copy/transfer site
Some new features in the 'Admin' section are the copy site and transfer site features. This allows you to create a copy of the design and structure of your site which you can use as the basis of a new site. Please note this isn't a complete copy like backup, as some data is not copied, e.g. individual posts in comment feeds or forums. But the text, images, design, structure, etc., are all applied to the new site.

The transfer site feature allows you to transfer an existing site (or a new copy) to another user of Moonfruit.

Both features have been asked for many times, both by customers that want to build more sites themselves and by resellers who find they want to build similar sites for clients in similar industries over and over. These new features will help make that easier to achieve.

The HTML widget
You can't add HTML to a Flash site, don't be ridiculous! Or can you ;-) ? Some of you will have been using the Beta version of this widget for some time now, but for others this will be new. The HTML snippet widget allows you to paste in HTML code (or markup for the purists out there) that you might find elsewhere (Amazon affiliates, Youtube videos, Twitter feeds, etc.) into your Moonfruit website and use it seamlessly with our other features. The changes/improvements for this release are:

The widget now works in all major browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and on PC and Mac
Works with all HTML snippets (probably - we can't find any yet it doesn't work with, but I'm sure you will ;-)
Some regularly used services (Youtube player, Twitter feed, etc.) have some preconfigured widgets (snippets) available to help you get started (use the 'Setup' tab to get the HTML code)

So this new feature makes available all Google Gadgets, all Widgetbox widgets, all Amazon widgets and more. Happy hunting!!

But remember, this still only works if you have the Flash 10 player!! Currently FP10 has around 86% penetration according to Adobe but growing by 3-4% per month.

Product selling page templates
There are now some new product selling page templates with suggested layouts for creating easy to use product pages on Moonfruit. You can do this in the 'Add page' option in the 'pages' menu.

For those of you waiting, these are not the long awaited e-commerce updates, so apologies about that, but we are still working towards that goal and the interface lays yet further foundations for the e-commerce tools that will require these new technologies to work as well as they can.

Anyway, so that's about it. We hope you enjoy it and let us know what you think! Enjoy!

Known issues with new beta toolbar (keyboard shortcuts)

Keyboard shortcuts, such as copy, paste and delete among others, do not work in the beta toolbar
The Ctrl key does not work, e.g for multiple select and for drag select or for forcing links to work in edit mode
In Firefox, keyboard nudge, enter and tab keys do not work and the cursor will not flash in any text field

Final creative prize for a Macbook Pro

Joe — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:46:00 +0100

Thank you all for making this competition so special. The creative entries have really blown us away and we'll be continuing to pick through them all, post up the best and create a gallery to pay our respects for all those who have entered. (And maybe a few discretionary prizes too ending Friday 10th July 3pm BST).

But we thought we'd end this crazy Twitter promotion with one more Macbook Pro prize. And this will go to the creator of the best website on Moonfruit.com. Anyone can enter from new or old customers, friends or foes, and you certainly don't have to enter if you don't want to ;-).

The website contest will run until 17th July (next Friday 3pm BST) at which point we'll pick and announce the winner.

Judging a website is going to be tricky, so when you enter your website we want you to tell us why it's special or innovative and why you think it should win. All entries should be as comments on this blog and we'll pick the winner from there. We'll pick the site that is most true to its stated objective and inspires us as a great example of what a website can do. Build it about something you're passionate about and are interested in.

Thanks again for all your support and may the Fruit be with you. Always.

Rules

Create a website on www.moonfruit.com
Post it on this blog with your reasons for why it should be picked
One website entry per person (and one post please!)
Winner will be posted to this blog on 17th July at 3pm BST (GMT+1)
Good luck!

Twitter censors Moonfruit? What does it mean for the future of Twitocracy?

Wendy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:08:00 +0100

Late Friday night 3rd July, around midnight UK time Moonfruit finally tumbled off the top of the trends list on Twitter. Now this wasn’t wholly unexpected with July 4th on the way and the resignation of Sarah Palin. But what was odd is how it that it never returned despite the stats being above other trending topics. If you compare Moonfruit vs Wimbledon in terms of share of tweets (see graph below), you can see Moonfruit has ranked higher at all times except the Men’s final. But Wimbledon has been a trending topic several times over the weekend. I’ve also included data for Serena and Venus which have also been on the top trends list.

http://twist.flaptor.com/?span=168&gram=moonfruit%2Cwimbledon%2Cserena%2Cvenus

There is further data available at http://hashtags.org/ which shows popular hashtag topics. So on balance it looks like the Moonfruit tag has been removed from the trends list by Twitter.

We also sent an email to Twitter on Saturday asking them about this, but have yet to get a reply. It may be because it’s been the 4th July weekend, so we'll wait and see but given the profile of this story and the furore in the twittersphere we would expect them to respond?

What does this mean?

Ok, first things first. When we started this we wanted to create a buzz there’s no doubt about that. But we didn’t expect the campaign to become so large. And believe it or not, we didn’t want to dominate Twitter for 10 days, or push important subjects like Iran off the agenda.

But given how it has turned out we are also touched by how people have responded to the brand and campaign. We love how they’ve questioned it, played with it, joked about it, sung about it, painted it, made it out of fruit, shouted at it and made it what it is through their participation. We are in awe of the brilliance and creativity of the Twittersphere. So thank you all.

However, we also recognise that the campaign sets a dangerous precedent and could have implications for how Twitter is used and abused by marketers. This is a subject much commented on (see Mashable, Techcrunch, BBC), etc.

So if Twitter had come to us and said, “guys, enough is enough”, then we would have worked with them to limit the campaign, or complied with whatever they were demanding. However, if they have pulled the trending without explanation or communication, this sets rather a different tone.

Not to be misinterpreted, it’s certainly their right to protect their network and technology investment. (And incidentally, I think taking us off the trends at this point is the right thing for Twitter, and I’m happy with that response). But as a company that strives to provide a real time, democratic communication platform, we don't believe taking action quietly behind the scenes is the right answer, not exactly transparent. Particularly given the numbers of press, marketers, businesses and consumers on twitter following this campaign right now.

I’ve said it before in comments on other blogs, but this is probably a commercial channel for Twitter in the future (I’m sure they’ve thought about it! Maybe we've touched a nerve.) Perhaps there should be ‘commercial trends’ vs ‘normal trends’ lists. And its certainly been said that users should be able to filter their feeds to remove ‘commercial’ or unwanted tags.

What would help me is a clear understanding of what happened, and therefore what the new ‘rules of the game’ are going forward. What does this mean for topics on Twitter? What does it mean for marketers? If we were removed as ‘spam’, when did we become spam, was it ok for the first few days, just not after? And are the creative responses, videos, images, songs, etc. all just spam? (see 'Real people get creative with Moonfruit').

Two oil paintings of Moonfruit? A woman paper-maching her face to look like a moon (while eating fruit)? A ransom letter to Moonfruit demanding a Mac? A man making his lunch zuchinni into the words ‘Moonfruit’? Writing songs and penning Haiku’s? Teenagers dancing and producing films? Is this spam?

Maybe there's no right answer, ultimately only what the twitter crowd agree. Perhaps if they had been given a bit longer they would have decided for themselves. That's the intention surely of 'follow' and 'unfollow'.

What does the Twitterverse think?

Twitter, what happened?

Important Update – Big Bang Finale!

The competition response has been crazy and wonderful. Thank you all. But to bring the mayhem to a close and remain respectful to the Twitterverse, we’ve decided to bring forward the end date from Friday 10th July to Tuesday 7th July (e.g. this week).
This means all remaining Macbook Pros will be given away on this last day. Still 10 Macbooks, just in 7 days not 10. So there will be 4 winners on Tuesday for Macbook prizes 7, 8, 9 and 10. All will be randomly picked from the last 24 hour of tweets.

We’ll still take creative entries for discretionary prizes, so send them to us @moontweet.

And we’re looking at how we can have an ongoing competition for our customers who built the best new sites each month.

Once again, thank you all for your input, creativity, love and humour (and humor ;-). Best of luck!!

Wendy Tan White

Real people get creative with #moonfruit

Joe — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:24:00 +0100

Well we never expected this! Songs, pictures, stories - all about Moonfruit. This crazy thing is getting out of control! We love the things you're doing. You guys have turned this Twitter campaign into a Creative Moonfruit Movement.

NB: Will add as fast as we can. We are using the searches below and a database of tweets to look at entries. Please add to this blog if you think your entries are missing. Thankyou!

Creative responses on YouTube
Creative responses on Flickr
Our 'Thank You' compilation of responses

Here's selection of some we've picked up, sorry we haven't got to everyone yet there are so many:

@sutuma http://bit.ly/Z6IoR (first winner)

@tear96 http://bit.ly/19snmq (2nd winner)

@chadwelch http://bit.ly/w73zF (3rd winner)

@bramketting #Moonfruit didn't comply to my demands so I set the bird free: http://pic.gd/de8f5 It's over: http://bit.ly/1VxxCh (4th winner)

@Felorah http://bit.ly/tKZVX (robot cartoon animation)

@awessendorf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vckPscOt7Y (cartoon song)

@usebombs http://twitpic.com/9695y (Moonfruit picture quiz)

@topitzman http://bit.ly/krfq6 cool Moonfruit song

@pauldz http://twitpic.com/947yr (moonfruit comic strip)

@ChosenPredator http://bit.ly/VqI8O (moonfruit puppet story)

@sloorp http://bit.ly/143TzF (moonfruit animated story)

@MasterWayne http://twitpic.com/975wm (mathematical fruit)

@eagleascent http://bit.ly/ir3UE (US kid talks to himself)

@pauldz http://bit.ly/UqJSF (picture story)

@fabulouscess http://bit.ly/U1XMa (two sisters singing)

@JorjLim http://bit.ly/17mJNI (so bad it's great)

@aurelienlewin http://twitpic.com/94r44 (radio active moonfruit)

@tgundred http://twitpic.com/991n9 (apple moonfruit)

@kelsiwaslike http://twitpic.com/992ja (another apple moonfruit)

@mayasud http://twitpic.com/994c4 (nice picture nursery rhyme)

@essexgourmet http://twitpic.com/9dzms

@rockstarsharks http://bit.ly/bc4uT (video shows real dedication!)

@lintster http://twitpic.com/9p1sp (cute illustration]

@yashiyama http://twitpic.com/9ff4q (adorable!)

And there's more to come. If you've seen some that you think are great post them here too. Enjoy!

Celebrate 10 years of Moonfruit and win a MacBook Pro

Joe — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:47:00 +0100

To celebrate Moonfruit's 10th birthday we are giving away 10 new Macbook Pro's, one each day for 10 days! If you've never seen one of these in real life, they are just as svelte and beautifully crafted as they look in the pictures, we can't keep our hands off them! (I'm using on now, but not one of the competition ones obviously ;-) )

Check the full details of the competition at http://www.moonfruit.com/macbook-pro.html and follow us @moontweet to find out who the winners are each day.

We wouldn't be here today without all you wonderful people building websites with us and allowing us to support you in your online adventures. So a special thanks to the 2m+ of you who've built a site with us!

Happy tweeting!

What a nice thing to say

Joe — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:04:00 +0000

This one made me laugh, so I thought I'd publish it here too. I especially like the point about Jelly Tots, a much underrated confectionary if you ask me!

"what can you get for under £50 these days ?mmmmm..." other than the Moonfruit website builder of course!

hire out a washing machine man for one hour
24 decent curries from waitrose (that's without pilau rice)
2 drum lessons
a train ticket from bristol to chelthnam (that's not far)
2000 jelly tots (without the packaging)
2 days worth of petrol (that's if you drive like Michael Schumacher - I try)
2 pots of Clinique moisturising cream
a night out on the town with the chicks (this is a tame night by the way)
18 cups of grande lattes from starbucks
A YEARS WORTH OF THE BEST SITE BUILDING PACKAGE THIS SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE FOR UNDER £50 FROM MOONFRUIT! Which includes, emails, storage space, 247 support, advert free, ecommerce tools, membership tools, hosting, video players, picture galleries, mp3 jukebox, widget library, forums, the ability to move everything about in a moment, (wow) all this and more along with the ability to BUILD A PROFESSIONAL GROOVY SITE THAT CAN HELP GENERATE YOU AN INCOME! Of course everything has hiccups, but concentrating on the rightness in people will generate more rightness , these guys and gals from moonfruit have put together an amazing package, it is cost efficient ,and makes it easy for everyone to get creative, with the potential of earning a living from it. Moonfruit has been my best investment to date. Thanks!"

- Alison

A good point, well made ;-). Any ideas for other good things for £50?

Joe