If you saw the last news post, or have been following our twitter feed, you know that Gene and I went to Future of Web Apps 2009 in Miami. Ryan Carson of Carsonified really put on a first rate show, the speakers and topics were truly enlightening, and most of all, inspiring. After hearing and talking to the best minds from Wufoo, Freshbooks, Digg, Facebook, 37 Signals, Google, Mozilla, and more, and then having it capped by a call-to-action from Gary Vaynerchuk, it was easy to feel ready to get back and start pumping out some great work. If you are considering going to one of these, just do it. And even if you don’t have a web app, or aren’t really thinking about one, don’t think a conference like this isn’t for you. Much of what was discussed was about building business and making money. Who doesn’t want that, right?

As far as actual substance, if there was any kind of theme to be discerned from the two days, it would be “iterate based on testing and metrics” (those are my words). Sounds a bit dry, but it’s not and it’s how you get more and more users to come back to your site, stay on your site, and buy what you’re selling. Digg.com Creative Director Daniel Burka’s workshop started off by showing a slide titled “Your Design Sucks”. The idea behind that is that you have no idea how successful your website will be until you put in front of people. You might think you’ve nailed it, but your users will determine how easy it is to use and how compelling it is. Freshbooks CEO Mike McDerment said it this way – “Customers have all the answers”. The key is to have a vision, and something people want to consume, and when you put it in front of them pay attention to what they do and how they use it, and then adapt again and again to them to make it easier and easier and more and more compelling. How do you do this? Usability testing, phone surveys of your customers, A/B testing, event logging, poring over web stats by looking at more than just page views, talking to users, answering every single email, commenting on blogs, monitoring twitter, the list goes on. There are concrete, measurable ways to increase usage of your site. It’s about so much more than just having a good product and a nice website.

I could go on and there was really so much more than that, but again, you should really try to attend one of these, you won’t regret it.

Lastly, check out some photos from Day 2 of FOWA.