If you are a business owner or an entrepreneur, perhaps you have heard of “dogfooding”, or perhaps you haven’t.  Wikipedia describes dogfooding as “a scenario in which a company uses its own product to test and promote the product”.

A perfect example of dogfooding: in 1980, Apple Computer president Michael Scott actually banned typewriters within their corporate offices in order to promote the use of their newly-invented personal computer. Scott did not just want to tell their clientele that typewriters were obselete; he wanted to prove it to them by example:

“Apple is an innovative company. We must believe and lead in all areas. If word processing is so neat, then let’s all use it!”

Michael Scott, President/CEO, Apple Computers, 1977-1981

Thirteen05 may not be inventing personal computers, but we are constantly using new technology, and are always striving to push the envelope in everything we create for our clients.  It’s important that everything we include in our clients’ sites has been tested and proven to be effective–not only from a functionality standpoint–but also from a marketing perspective. Thirteen05 encourages the usage of plugins such as Yoast SEO and WordFence, not because they have great reviews in WordPress’s Plugin Library (although they do), but because we have used these plugins for our own website, and they have proven to be beneficial.

Dogfooding is extremely important in the technology industry because the horizon is constantly changing. Dogfooding allows companies like thirteen05 to demo new technologies for ourselves to determine if they are helpful in increasing profit in real-life scenarios before we utilize them for our clientele.