There is a variety of bicycle race where the contestants spend most of the race cycling as slowly as possible round the vélodrome before one of them makes a break and pedals like the clappers for the finishing line. Start sprinting too soon and you run out of steam and your opponent will overhaul you. Leave it too late and you lose.

What has this to do with web design? Well, one of our clients is the Crime Writers Association and at midnight last night the 2008 Debut Dagger Competition closed. In recent years we’ve added an online entry facility to the dead tree and snail mail alternative: contestants upload their entry and pay the entry fee via PayPal. The competition opened on 15 November and closed on 15 February. That’s 93 days in total. So what percentage entered on the last day?

Over 30%. And almost 5% left it to the last hour of the last day. That’s why it reminded me of a bicycle race.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.