Week 211 was posted by Charanjit Chana on 2021-11-08.
I launched Sitejoy back in May 2020 and wasn’t entirely sure how it would go. It was an idea almost a decade in the making. Would I be able to hit 100 sites with the web feeling so bloated?
It didn't actually take that long to find the first 100 sites, but the workload in auditing and populating the site is fairly time consuming so I scaled back in my efforts and try to get at least 1 site a day out there. That meant the march towards 500 and then 1,000 was a bit slower.
In all honesty, the auditing process is actually exhausting. I check the responsiveness, the page speed, the page weight (in transit) and the overall JavaScript footprint. I'd love to automate as much of this as I could, I just haven’t quite got around to doing that yet and it’s something I should look into more. At the very least, combining the submission process with calculating the PageSpeed score would be a massive win for me.
This month, I finally hit 1,000 sites featured on Sitejoy. That a huge milestone for me and certainly felt out of reach all the way back when the site was launched.
I’d love to hit 2,000 in the next 12 months. It means getting around 3 sites a day, or 20 sites a week posted and to do that would require automation to be in place. 1,500 is a more realistic number but I will be looking into automation in the near future and there's no harm in having a stretch goal to shoot for.
As well as automation, there are a few more things that I have on my list to make Sitejoy a little better:
- No JS Club: A list of sites that don't require any JavaScript to function
- 100 club: Sites that achieve 100 PageSpeed scores for both mobile and desktop
- Improved categorisation: It's missing on a lot of the sites featured and needs some refinement
- Colour filters: Improve how colours are classified and bring the ability to filter sites using colours
- Authors page: There are a few website builders and authors who have multiple sites featured so it makes sense to give them a listing of their own
- Similar sites: Automatically feature similar sites, either by category and/or colour
- Search improvements: I use Duck Duck Go at the moment, which is fine, but the results aren't always the best. The page that links to the page you're looking for can often come first which isn't great
So plenty to do, even just 18 months into the project. I haven't monetised it at all and I'll keep it that way for now as I think the niche focus on fast and responsive websites is more important.
Tags: sitejoy