NSquared

10-Year Anniversary: Ask Us Anything! We dedicated some time to recording a Founders Talk where we answer questions submitted by our team here at NSquared. We hope you love it and learn something new ?? https://lnkd.in/eqzqQXdD

In February of 2020, I started sketching out the first wireframes for a tool that I desperately wished existed—a tool to make managing accessibility audits easier. Like so many in the accessibility space, I was frustrated. Logging issues in spreadsheets felt clunky and inefficient. Capturing and editing screenshots by hand, describing where problems were occurring, copying and pasting notes from cell to cell, and explaining the same things repeatedly to well-meaning developers was tedious and time-consuming.? I wanted something better—something that could simplify the process and help both accessibility professionals and developers doing remediation work smarter, not harder.?Something that would give website owners a view into the accessibility of their website and the progress being made. Fast forward four years, a partnership with my incredible collaborator Nathan Tyler ??, the acquisition of a complementary tool that propelled our progress, and countless hours of effort from the amazing NSquared development team... AAArdvark was born!? AAArdvark is the accessibility tool I always wanted—designed to take the headaches out of auditing and issue tracking while keeping the process clear and collaborative.? I’m thrilled to finally share this labor of love with you. If accessibility is part of your work (or if you're looking to make it part of your work), I invite you to give AAArdvark a try. And the best part? You can try it for free! Get access to the full suite of our tools for your homepage at no cost and see for yourself how AAArdvark simplifies accessibility work. The link is on my profile and in the comments. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come, and I can’t wait to hear what you think! #a11y #accessibility

We're coming up on our 10-year anniversary! Here's an inside look at what the last decade has looked like for founders Nathan Tyler and Natalie MacLees, from building their first product in a coffee shop to working with an international team of 15 wonderful humans.

? Get to know a bit more about our co-founders in 90 seconds ? Amanda asks CEO/Co-Founder Nathan Tyler about his partnership with COO/Co-Founder Natalie MacLees

Some of you may already know this. We've expanded into new territory and we're going at it HARD. -- We've recently launched a world-class group of SaaS solutions that you absolutely need to check out -- AAArdvark | the fastest way to perform accessibility audits - made by and for A11y professionals - audit across platform including #WordPress, #Squarespace, #WiX, #Shopify, #Webflow, and more BlinkMetrics | a non-enterprise, metric tracking & monitoring business intelligence platform - made by and for startups - automated single-source-of-truth #KPI reporting that grabs metrics from all the other #SaaS platforms SimplySchedule(.)me | complete website creation and hosting for any appointment-based business - made by and for small business - fully customizable booking website with quick-start template for #consultants, #notaries, and more -- No matter what we make next, we'll never stop improving our highly-rated, flagship WordPress plugins -- Simply Schedule Appointments? | customizable website booking experience | ? 5 | ? 40,000+ active installs Draw Attention? | fully responsive image mapping | ? 4.8 | ? 20,000+ active installs Simple Client Dashboard | limited WP admin role for #webmasters and clients | ? 4.5 | ? 3,000+ active installs -- Reach out to us if you have any questions at all! We'll make sure you get connected to the most perfect person on our team to get you the info you need.

Everyone has big goals (at least, we hope you do!), but not everyone has a solid process in place to make sure those goals are met. Here's our process that actually produces results: ?? Have a project management system in place that the whole company uses regularly (read: religiously). We use Asana. ? Create a separate project for every goal for each person. It's important not to have multiple owners of a single goal. This ensures ownership and accountability. ?? Spend as much time as it takes at the beginning of the month/quarter/etc. to SMART your goals. If you don't know what SMARTing means, you haven't lived. ?? Set milestones - WITH DEADLINES - that are achievable every week or so. This helps the goal owner to see progress and understand in real time if things are on pace or falling behind. ? And maybe most importantly ? ?? Make sure people are actually paying attention to each other's goals! We cannot stress this enough. If the goal-owner feels like no one is listening and nobody cares, they have less incentive to complete their goals. We review each goal for each team member every single week throughout the quarter. Sure, it takes time, but it's WILDLY IMPORTANT that team members feel seen and supported and have the opportunity to ask for help. Full Transparency = Full Trust It is PAINFUL to set these up properly each quarter, but it is so, so, SO worth it at the end of the day. (^ clearly written by an employee) Let us know how you or your business gets things done when it comes to goal-setting ??

Does your company track these recommended sales KPIs?

Curious about expanding Draw Attention's capabilities? Discover how it integrates with a variety of plugins to unlock new possibilities. Check them out! ?? #WordPress https://lnkd.in/dWjGXxjs

Looking to expand our minds a bit ... What business (or related) book would you most recommend and can you sum up something you learned in 10 words or less?

It's so hard to tell if you're ever making meaningful progress within your organization ... . . That's why it's so important to have clear & organized operational processes in place. Our team just finished up Day 1 of our quarterly planning and we are feeling invigorated! That's not to say we don't have problems. We have #issues ... lots of them. But the good news is we have an inclusive process for all team members to surface what we each find most important so we can work through them as a team. Company issues we discussed in depth today: 1?? shifting focus between multiple projects causing slow progress 2?? biting off more than we can chew within a single project or task 3?? negative impact of unplanned work on larger projects 4?? higher bug counts taking time away from product development 5?? challenges to #sales strategy for different product types (#WordPressPlugins versus #SaaS ... y'all, it's a real thing) Next steps we're taking to solve each one: 1?? continuing to track real-time data to see the effects of team effort on #revenue and workload, then focusing on what's most impactful 2?? breaking larger projects into bite-sized pieces and crushing them 3?? structuring large projects with enough empty room for the unplanned, unknown, and completely unexpected (#startups, am I right?) 4?? heightening our standards for peer reviews and QA; holding ourselves & teammates accountable 5?? continuing to refine our sales & marketing strategies by identifying, tracking, and monitoring the relevant KPIs (aka metrics) with our fave #BusinessIntelligence tool BlinkMetrics