This is Part 5 of the 5-part series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he'll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy. Maybe you'll even get a wobbly demo. "Great," I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, "so how will people find out about this brilliant website?" Cue sound of cicadas buzzing. (Or "crickets chirping" but in Texas the cicadas are louder.)

Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder's face. "Here it comes," I think, "there is a strategy after all!" Except the "strategy" is a tirade of drivel I've heard so many times I can lip-sync as the words spew out the founder's mouth:

"We're going to A/B-test AdWords campaigns until we discover our hook." "We're going to A/B-test our landing pages until the right message appears." "We're better than everyone else at SEO." "A friend of mine knows how to get popular on Twitter." "We're going to get reviews on blogs." "We're going to start with our own network and grow it from there." "We're going to use an affiliate program so our customers sell it for us." "We're putting a 'Retweet' button inside the product to encourage viral growth."

The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. Nowadays the "strategy" above sounds the same as:

"We'll have a website so people can read about us." "We'll have an email address so people can communicate with us without picking up the phone."

Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail. OK, so what can you do to rise above the cacophony that is the Internet? Here come a few ideas; leave more and discuss in the comments! Infection built-in, not bolt-on WhenBusy is a bootstrapped startup that lets people schedule meetings with you in currently-available time-slots without you having to share your calendar [disclosure: I'm an advisor]. For example, here's what the founder's (Josh Baer) availability looks like:

Instead of trading emails with lists of available time-slots, Josh just sends the link to this page and the other person uses the product to schedule a meeting. This is the viral step: Having trialed the tool, the stranger might use it herself, then more people find out about it, and so forth. Note that at no point did I say "a button lets people 'like' this on Facebook." I know of no companies who have "gone viral" because of buttons. Buttons are good — why not use them? — but they don't make your product intrinsically viral like WhenBusy. Which is OK — not all products need to be viral! But if it's not viral you still need a killer method of finding customers, and if it is supposed to be viral it better be encoded in the DNA of the application, not bolted on as an afterthought. Frightening honesty Balsamiq Mockups is a ludicrously popular wire-framing tool. The software is good — don't get me wrong — but what sets Peldi (the founder) apart isn't prescient feature selection or bug-free releases, it's his startling transparency. He published revenue figures even when they were still pathetic, he pledged loudly and eagerly to give away lots of free copies to non-profits, and he revealed all his (remarkably effective) marketing strategies (updated here) even though it meant competitors would learn them too. He didn't just have an "authentic voice," he made public promises. That's compelling. He didn't just "tell it like it is," he gave up his marketing secrets and opened his company books. That's newsworthy. This isn't merely "being human" and all that claptrap, it's almost too much honesty, like when you ask someone how it's going and they tell you about a weird pustule on their middle toe that's been oozing since last Wednesday. In a world where everyone and their brother is "joining the conversation" (oops, I use that phrase constantly!), you have to truly bare your soul if you want to compete on the transparency front. It's not for everyone, and I'm not suggesting it ought to be, but there's no sense in half-assing it. Making Oprah cry The number one mistake founders make when trying to generate press is talking about what the company does rather than telling a compelling story. Does Twitter get press when it helps Iranians fight an illegitimate government or when it creates a new internal IT process to increase up-time? Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs? Does 37signals have over three million users because their software is "better" than the competition, or is it because they motivate designers and entrepreneurs through their writing and philosophy? Without a powerful narrative, your chances of getting big press and enthusiastic users who spread the word for you approach zero as a limit. It took me years to figure this out at Smart Bear. At first when someone asked what the Smart Bear tool suite was, I would say: Smart Bear makes data-mining tools for version control systems. It's a description so esoteric that, although accurate, not even a hardcore geek would have any idea what it is, much less why it's useful. Years later, when it was clear that code review software became our sole focus, I got better at describing it: You know how Word has "track changes" where you can make modifications and comments and show them to someone else? We do that for software developers, integrating with their tools instead of Word and working within their standard practices. Better, yes, and for a while I thought I nailed it, but still no press. Eventually (thanks to helpful journalists) I realized that I was still just describing what it is rather than why anyone cares. I left it up to the reader to figure out why she should get excited. Eventually I developed stories like the following, each tuned to a certain category of listener. Here's the one for the journalists: It's always fun to tell a journalist like you that we enable software developers to review each other's code because your reaction is always: "Wait a minute, you're seriously telling me they don't do this already?" The idea of editing and review is so embedded in your industry you can't imagine life without it, and you're right! You know better than anyone how another set of eyeballs finds important problems. Of course two heads are better than one, but developers traditionally work in isolation, mainly because there's a dearth of tools which help teams bridge the social gap of an ocean, integrate with incumbent tools, and are lightweight enough to still be fun and relevant. That's what we do: Bring the benefits of peer review to software development. Now the reason for excitement is clear: We're transforming how software is created, applying the age-old techniques of peer review to an industry that needs it but where it's traditionally too hard to do. That's a story. It took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the story was. It's hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests. Advertising → [transmogrification] → Revenue Yeah yeah, nowadays marketing is about "relationships" and "authority" and other things which cost time but not money. It's all I hear about anymore. But don't be so quick to throw out the idea of spending money to make money. Advertising isn't dead; you can still buy eyeballs. I'm not talking about "triage" strategies like buying AdWords linking to a page of ads, I'm just pointing out that most companies on Earth don't depend on "joining the conversation" to acquire customers. It sounds simple: The average cost of acquiring a customer is $C (advertising, sales, support, doing demos) and the lifetime revenue you get from that customer is $R, so if C < R you have a business. C can be driven down with cheaper ads, better lead quality, a more efficient conversion rate, and straightforward trials with minimal tech support. Of course it's not that simple, and many business plans I've seen (unintentionally) omit many of the true costs of acquisition. Read this great interview with Sean Ellis at VentureHacks for a great discussion of how to seek a repeatable, profitable model where C < R, and then optimize and grow. It's a little heavy on the "huge VC-style company" strategy for my style, but you'll come away with a strong perspective on how to build a machine that turns advertising dollars into (a greater number of) revenue dollars. Celebrity Championship I already beat you to death about how celebrity endorsement can serve as an untouchable competitive advantage, and it's also an answer to how to burst out of the dull roar of Internet marketing. Take me. I'm no Seth Godin, but consider what I could do if I were a co-founder in a new software development tool company:

I have personal relationships with the CEOs and other influencers at hundreds of software development companies. During ideation, they would brainstorm. During beta-testing they would be guinea pigs. After release of v3.0 some would be ready to become paying customers. I have relationships with editors of nearly all software development publications (on-line and off); I've already published articles with them. Some would help vet our stories, some would publish our articles. I've bought ads in every major (and quite a few minor) software development websites, magazines, newsletters, conferences, and webinars. So when it's time to advertise, we'll come in with the right message for the audience and probably cut a deal. If you read this blog you're probably a software developer, so even just a few mentions here might be more powerful than $10,000 in A/B tested Google AdWords. If we were trying to raise money, my previous success would not only get us the initial meetings but would be a significant bump in our chance of raising it.

While everyone else is mucking about with a new blog, blasting their LinkedIn network with pleading emails, and paying out the nose to test AdWord variants, we're years ahead in the marketing war. Let's generate more ideas Share the love in the comments section. Let's come up with more ways to reach customers that isn't the same as everyone else.

This is Part 5 of the 5-part series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he'll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy. Maybe you'll even get a wobbly demo. "Great," I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, "so how will people find out about this brilliant website?" Cue sound of cicadas buzzing. (Or "crickets chirping" but in Texas the cicadas are louder.)

Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder's face. "Here it comes," I think, "there is a strategy after all!" Except the "strategy" is a tirade of drivel I've heard so many times I can lip-sync as the words spew out the founder's mouth:

"We're going to A/B-test AdWords campaigns until we discover our hook." "We're going to A/B-test our landing pages until the right message appears." "We're better than everyone else at SEO." "A friend of mine knows how to get popular on Twitter." "We're going to get reviews on blogs." "We're going to start with our own network and grow it from there." "We're going to use an affiliate program so our customers sell it for us." "We're putting a 'Retweet' button inside the product to encourage viral growth."

The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. Nowadays the "strategy" above sounds the same as:

"We'll have a website so people can read about us." "We'll have an email address so people can communicate with us without picking up the phone."

Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail. OK, so what can you do to rise above the cacophony that is the Internet? Here come a few ideas; leave more and discuss in the comments! Infection built-in, not bolt-on WhenBusy is a bootstrapped startup that lets people schedule meetings with you in currently-available time-slots without you having to share your calendar [disclosure: I'm an advisor]. For example, here's what the founder's (Josh Baer) availability looks like:

Instead of trading emails with lists of available time-slots, Josh just sends the link to this page and the other person uses the product to schedule a meeting. This is the viral step: Having trialed the tool, the stranger might use it herself, then more people find out about it, and so forth. Note that at no point did I say "a button lets people 'like' this on Facebook." I know of no companies who have "gone viral" because of buttons. Buttons are good — why not use them? — but they don't make your product intrinsically viral like WhenBusy. Which is OK — not all products need to be viral! But if it's not viral you still need a killer method of finding customers, and if it is supposed to be viral it better be encoded in the DNA of the application, not bolted on as an afterthought. Frightening honesty Balsamiq Mockups is a ludicrously popular wire-framing tool. The software is good — don't get me wrong — but what sets Peldi (the founder) apart isn't prescient feature selection or bug-free releases, it's his startling transparency. He published revenue figures even when they were still pathetic, he pledged loudly and eagerly to give away lots of free copies to non-profits, and he revealed all his (remarkably effective) marketing strategies (updated here) even though it meant competitors would learn them too. He didn't just have an "authentic voice," he made public promises. That's compelling. He didn't just "tell it like it is," he gave up his marketing secrets and opened his company books. That's newsworthy. This isn't merely "being human" and all that claptrap, it's almost too much honesty, like when you ask someone how it's going and they tell you about a weird pustule on their middle toe that's been oozing since last Wednesday. In a world where everyone and their brother is "joining the conversation" (oops, I use that phrase constantly!), you have to truly bare your soul if you want to compete on the transparency front. It's not for everyone, and I'm not suggesting it ought to be, but there's no sense in half-assing it. Making Oprah cry The number one mistake founders make when trying to generate press is talking about what the company does rather than telling a compelling story. Does Twitter get press when it helps Iranians fight an illegitimate government or when it creates a new internal IT process to increase up-time? Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs? Does 37signals have over three million users because their software is "better" than the competition, or is it because they motivate designers and entrepreneurs through their writing and philosophy? Without a powerful narrative, your chances of getting big press and enthusiastic users who spread the word for you approach zero as a limit. It took me years to figure this out at Smart Bear. At first when someone asked what the Smart Bear tool suite was, I would say: Smart Bear makes data-mining tools for version control systems. It's a description so esoteric that, although accurate, not even a hardcore geek would have any idea what it is, much less why it's useful. Years later, when it was clear that code review software became our sole focus, I got better at describing it: You know how Word has "track changes" where you can make modifications and comments and show them to someone else? We do that for software developers, integrating with their tools instead of Word and working within their standard practices. Better, yes, and for a while I thought I nailed it, but still no press. Eventually (thanks to helpful journalists) I realized that I was still just describing what it is rather than why anyone cares. I left it up to the reader to figure out why she should get excited. Eventually I developed stories like the following, each tuned to a certain category of listener. Here's the one for the journalists: It's always fun to tell a journalist like you that we enable software developers to review each other's code because your reaction is always: "Wait a minute, you're seriously telling me they don't do this already?" The idea of editing and review is so embedded in your industry you can't imagine life without it, and you're right! You know better than anyone how another set of eyeballs finds important problems. Of course two heads are better than one, but developers traditionally work in isolation, mainly because there's a dearth of tools which help teams bridge the social gap of an ocean, integrate with incumbent tools, and are lightweight enough to still be fun and relevant. That's what we do: Bring the benefits of peer review to software development. Now the reason for excitement is clear: We're transforming how software is created, applying the age-old techniques of peer review to an industry that needs it but where it's traditionally too hard to do. That's a story. It took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the story was. It's hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests. Advertising → [transmogrification] → Revenue Yeah yeah, nowadays marketing is about "relationships" and "authority" and other things which cost time but not money. It's all I hear about anymore. But don't be so quick to throw out the idea of spending money to make money. Advertising isn't dead; you can still buy eyeballs. I'm not talking about "triage" strategies like buying AdWords linking to a page of ads, I'm just pointing out that most companies on Earth don't depend on "joining the conversation" to acquire customers. It sounds simple: The average cost of acquiring a customer is $C (advertising, sales, support, doing demos) and the lifetime revenue you get from that customer is $R, so if C < R you have a business. C can be driven down with cheaper ads, better lead quality, a more efficient conversion rate, and straightforward trials with minimal tech support. Of course it's not that simple, and many business plans I've seen (unintentionally) omit many of the true costs of acquisition. Read this great interview with Sean Ellis at VentureHacks for a great discussion of how to seek a repeatable, profitable model where C < R, and then optimize and grow. It's a little heavy on the "huge VC-style company" strategy for my style, but you'll come away with a strong perspective on how to build a machine that turns advertising dollars into (a greater number of) revenue dollars. Celebrity Championship I already beat you to death about how celebrity endorsement can serve as an untouchable competitive advantage, and it's also an answer to how to burst out of the dull roar of Internet marketing. Take me. I'm no Seth Godin, but consider what I could do if I were a co-founder in a new software development tool company:

I have personal relationships with the CEOs and other influencers at hundreds of software development companies. During ideation, they would brainstorm. During beta-testing they would be guinea pigs. After release of v3.0 some would be ready to become paying customers. I have relationships with editors of nearly all software development publications (on-line and off); I've already published articles with them. Some would help vet our stories, some would publish our articles. I've bought ads in every major (and quite a few minor) software development websites, magazines, newsletters, conferences, and webinars. So when it's time to advertise, we'll come in with the right message for the audience and probably cut a deal. If you read this blog you're probably a software developer, so even just a few mentions here might be more powerful than $10,000 in A/B tested Google AdWords. If we were trying to raise money, my previous success would not only get us the initial meetings but would be a significant bump in our chance of raising it.

While everyone else is mucking about with a new blog, blasting their LinkedIn network with pleading emails, and paying out the nose to test AdWord variants, we're years ahead in the marketing war. Let's generate more ideas Share the love in the comments section. Let's come up with more ways to reach customers that isn't the same as everyone else.

This is Part 2 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.

What if someone copies your awesome business idea? About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may ask: "What if a big company copies your idea and develops the same website as yours after your website goes public?" How can I answer this question? No, the question is: What are doing now knowing that a big company will copy your idea? No, wait, the real question is: What are you going to do when another smart, scrappy startup copies it, and gets $10m in funding, and is thrice featured on TechCrunch? No, wait, I'm sorry, the real question is: What are you going to do when there are four totally free, open-source competitors? No wait, I forgot, actually the question is: What happens when employee #2 makes off with your code and roadmap and marketing data and customer list, moves to Bolivia, and starts selling your stuff world-wide at one-tenth the price? The good news: There are good answers to these questions! The bad news: Almost no one I talk to has good answers, but they think they do. And that's fatal, because it means they're not working towards remedying that situation. Which means when one of the above scenarios happens, it will be too late. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Last week I detailed the most common misconceptions about competitive advantages, so go read that if you haven't already. To summarize: Anything that can be copied will be copied, including features, marketing copy, and pricing. Anything you read on popular blogs is also read by everyone else. You don't have an "edge" just because you're passionate, hard-working, or "lean." The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought. Like what? Insider information They say the only way to consistently make money on Wall Street is to have insider information. Unfortunately it's not a joke, and although it's illegal (and people occasionally go to jail for it), those in the know will tell you it's the norm.

Fortunately, using intimate knowledge of an industry and the specific pain points within an industry is a perfectly legal unfair advantage for a startup. Here's a real-world example of how this advantage manifests. Adriana has been a psychiatrist for 10 years; she understands the ins and outs of that business. During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams.  (Turns out that for big-business project management it's more valuable to be a sensible thinker and counselor than to be an expert in debugging legacy C++ code.) Now Adriana has an epiphany: Traditional practice-management software for psychiatrists totally sucks; she knows both the pain points and the existing software first-hand. But now she has the vision and ability to design her own software, capitalizing on modern trends (e.g. a web application instead of cumbersome installed applications) and new interpretations of HIPPA regulation (which allows web-based applications to store medical records like patient histories). Adriana holds a unique position: Expert in the industry, able to "geek out" with her target customer, yet capable of leading a product team. Even if someone else saw Adriana's product after the fact, it's almost impossible to find a person — or even assemble a team — who has more integrated knowledge. At best, they could copy. Of course by then Alicia has moved on to version two. Single-minded, uncompromising obsession with One Thing A popular comment on the previous post was that a "Unique Feature" could be a competitive advantage in some circumstances. Some examples of a feature being a company's primary advantage are:

Apple compromises everything in the name of design. Their products are over-priced, buggy, lacking features, and every experience I've had with their tech support has been atrocious, but man their stuff looks and feels nice! (I'm typing this on an Air and there's an iPhone in my pocket, so no Apple fan-boy mail please.) Google's search algorithm was just better, therefore they won the eyeballs, therefore they were able to monetize. Sure Bing and Yahoo are good now, but the advantage lasted long enough. Photodex is a little company you've never heard of I worked for in Austin in the 90's. We made an image browser with thumbnail previews so you didn't have to open each file individually to see what it was. (In the 90's, y'all, before that was built into all the operating systems!) Our advantage was speed. Not the best, not the most stable, didn't read the most formats, didn't have the most features, just "fastest." For many users of that product, speed wins; Photodex now makes tens of millions of dollars a year, and "speed" is still the only point on which they will not compromise.

However it's not enough for a feature to merely be unique (like my mini-browser) because it's still easily duplicated. Indeed, most of the innovations we've made at Smart Bear in the art of code review have already been duplicated by both commercial and open-source competitors. Rather, this requires unwavering devotion to the One Thing that is (a) hard, and (b) you refuse to lose, no matter what. Google has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on their search algorithm, the single biggest focus of the company even today, a decade after they decided that was their One Thing. They refuse to be beaten by competitors or black-hat hackers, whatever it takes. 37signals can build simple — almost trivial — software and earn three million customers because they absolutely will not compromise on their philosophy of simplicity, transparency, and owning their own company, and that's something millions of people respect and support. Competitors could build trivial web applications too (as Joel Spolsky is fond of saying, "Their software is just a bunch of text fields!"), but without the single-minded obsession it's just software with no features. To remain un-copyable, your One Thing needs to be not just central to your existence, but also difficult to achieve. Google's algorithm, combined with the hardware and software to implement a search of trillions of websites in 0.2 seconds, is hard to replicate; it took hundreds (thousands?) of really smart people at Microsoft and Yahoo years to catch up. 37signals' ranting platform — a blog with 131k followers and a best-selling book — is nearly impossible to build even with a full-time army of insightful writers. "Being hard to do" is still a true advantage, particularly when you devote your primary energy to it. P.S. For more, here are detailed examples of how this mindset also sets up your sales pitch. Personal authority Chris Brogan commands $22,000 for a single day of consulting in an industry (social media marketing) where all the information you need is already online and free. Joel Spolsky makes millions of dollars off bug tracking — an industry with hundreds of competitors and little innovation. My company Smart Bear sells the most expensive tool of its kind. How did we earn this powerful authority, and how can you earn this overwhelming advantage? I'm a great example of someone who wasn't an authority on anything, but built that authority over time to the point where now my company (Smart Bear) is untouchable as the leader in both revenue and ideas in the area of peer code review. Not only was I not an expert on code review prior to building a code review tool, I wasn't even an expert on software development processes generally! I didn't give lectures, I didn't have a blog, I didn't have a column in Dr. Dobbs magazine, and most interesting of all, I didn't even know "code review" was going to be what made the company successful! Unfortunately all this "authority" crap takes years of expensive effort, and even then success is probably due as much to luck as anything else, so is it worthwhile? Yes, exactly because it takes years of effort and a little luck. Authority cannot be purchased. You can't raise VC money and then "have authority" in a year. A big company cannot just decide they want to be the thought-leaders in their field. Even a pack of hyper-intelligent geeks cannot automatically become authorities because it's not about how well you can code. But how does authority convert to revenue? Here's one tiny example: I give talks on peer code review at conferences. My competition pays thousands of dollars for a booth, then spends thousands advertising to attendees begging them to come to that booth, then gives sales pitches at the booth to uninterested passersby who are also being bombarded by other pitches and distracted by the general hubbub. Whereas, because I'm a known authority on code review and software development, I get to talk for an entire hour to a captive, undistracted group of 100 people, self-selected as interested in code review. After the talk typically 5-20 people want to chat one-on-one. Some head straight to the booth to get a demo; for many I give a private demo of the product on sofas in the hallway. It's not unusual to get $10,000-$50,000 in sales over the next three months from people who saw me at that talk. That's just one example!  Now add to that: What's the effect of a blog that tens of thousands of people read? What's the effect on sales of my writing the book that's the modern authority of code review? Authority is expensive and time-consuming to earn, no doubt. But it's also an overwhelming, untouchable competitive advantage. (P.S. I'm hoping that the authority I'm slowly earning from this blog will help when I launch my next venture. That's not why I blog, but I certainly will leverage it when the time comes!) (P.P.S. I apologize for blatantly abusing the word "authority," considering I just lambasted everyone who does things like that.) The Dream Team The tech startup world is littered with famous killer teams: Gates & Allen, Steve & Steve, Page & Brin, Fried & DHH. In each case, the founders were super-smart, had complimentary skill sets, worked together well (or well enough to get to important success milestones), and as a team represented a unique, powerful, and (in retrospect) unstoppable force. Of course that's easy to see in retrospect, and retrospect is a terrible teacher, but the principle can work for any startup, especially when your goals are more modest than being the next Google. Take the success of ITWatchDogs, the company I helped bootstrap and eventually sell (before Smart Bear). The elements of our Dream Team were obvious from the start:

Varied skillsets. One experienced startup/business/salesman (Gerry), one proven software developer (me), one proven hardware developer (Michael). Common vision. We agreed what the product ought to be and that the ultimate goal of the company was to sell it. Insider knowledge. Gerry had done another successful startup in the same space, I had deep experience with the language and tools for embedded software, and Michael had decades of experience building inexpensive circuits and processors.

Of course a Dream Team doesn't guarantee success but it significantly reduces the risk of the startup, and furthermore is difficult for the competition to duplicate. This is especially true when someone on the team is already successful in their field, e.g. with a massively successful blog or a big startup success under their belt or a ridiculous rolodex. Since those are the kinds of competitive advantages that can't be bought or consistently created, having that person on the team is by proxy a killer advantage. P.S. This is the primary competitive advantage in a new startup I'm working on right now (to be announced soon), so shortly you'll see another example of this theory and — better yet! — you and I both will witness over the subsequent months whether or not this really resulted in a killer advantage! (Yes of course I'll share details!) (The right) Celebrity endorsement Hiten Shah's third company is KISSMetrics. On the surface, it's yet another "marketing metrics" company. This is a crowded, mature market with hundreds of competitors in every combination of large/small, expensive/mid/cheap/free, and product/service/hybrid. But Hiten has something none of those competitors has: Investors and mentors who are celebrities in exactly the market he's targeting. Folks like Dave McClure, Sean Ellis, and Eric Ries, all of whom not only help via conference call but actively promote KISSMetrics on their blogs, Twitter, and personal appearances. How much advertising will it take for competitors to overcome Hiten's endorsements and exposure?  Even if a competitor also wanted celebrity endorsement, these guys are taken, and in any field there's a limited number of widely-known and respected authorities. Many competitors have more features than KISSMetrics has. I can see the sales pitch now... The customer objects: "Gee it would be nice to have all those features," and Hiten responds "Well not really, because Dave, Sean, and Eric all say that those features are actually distractions and don't add to your bottom line. Our features are the right ones, as evidenced by these 20 companies that have shown increases in revenue." Just on the basis of these advisors, Hiten will get hundreds if not thousands of customers. You can't buy that kind of jumpstart, not even for millions of dollars, because it's not about faceless leads who saw KISSMetrics in an ad, it's people who trust Hiten because of his association with other people they already trust. P.S. If you're raising money, investors love to see a co-founder or even just an advisor who has been successful before. The VC game is more lemming-like than most care to admit. Existing customers ...or as Frank Rizzo says: Open your ears, jackass! Everyone you've ever sold to (and those who trialed but abandoned) possess the most valuable market research imaginable, and it's the one thing a new competitor absolutely will not have. This is kind of a cheat, because everyone says "I listen to my customers," which (nowadays) is just as bullshit as "We're passionate," but it's true that if you're actively learning from your customers and you never stop moving, creating, innovating, and learning, that puts you ahead of most companies in the world. As a company becomes successful it gains momentum, which means that it's going in one direction with one philosophy. Like physical momentum, change becomes harder to affect. It's logical; for example at Smart Bear we have 35,000 users, so making a drastic change to the user interface or typical workflow would mean too much retraining, even if the end result is better. Even "cool, agile" companies like 37signals are trapped. They've been so clear and confident in their philosophy of "do less," they cannot go after markets where "less" is not more but, actually, just less. For example, with more than a few sales people in a traditional sales organization it's impossible to use Highrise — the folks-of-many-signal believe pipeline reports and geographic domains and integrated campaign management are unnecessary complications, but actually it's Highrise that is unnecessary. Of course the world is changing, and in particular your customers are changing. Normally this leaves room for the next competitor, but if you're already entrenched you can leverage your existing status, insider knowledge, and revenue stream as long as you're willing to change too. You have more money, you're better known, you have existing happy customers to help spread the word, you have employees to build new things, and you have more experience with what customers actually do and actually need, which means you should have the best insight. Any new competitor would kill for just one of these advantages. If you're not using them, how silly is that? Zoho made exactly this argument to explain why they're not terribly worried that Microsoft is now a direct competitor: Companies don't get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways to commit suicide. Office 2010 will be the end of Zoho, if we stop innovating, stop being nimble and flexible in our business model. Then again, if we stop all that, Zoho will die anyway, no Office 2010 needed to do the job. 37signals is trapped inside their self-imposed philosophy, but you don't have to be. Go git 'em Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but it's still sucks when someone does it to you. Of course you can still battle it out in the marketplace, but you need something that can't be duplicated, something they could never beat you on, then hang your hat on that and don't look back. Don't despair if you don't have an unfair advantage yet. I didn't either when I started Smart Bear! But I built toward having some, and eventually earned it. What else? What other competitive advantages can't be easily copied, or if they are copied it doesn't matter? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person.

Interesting patterns emerged:

Everyone makes the same classes of error. Those who avoided just one of those errors stood out in the crowd. These are problems with the business concept or the founder's attitude, not specific to raising angel money.

You're probably making a lot of these errors too. Not that I blame you! After all, these became clear to me only after seeing hundreds of applications; you don't have the luxury of that perspective. So for the next few weeks I'm doing a series on these mistakes and what to do about them.  This post serves as a hyperlinked table of contents, so either bookmark this page or subscribe by email or RSS to get notified when new articles get posted. Here's the list:

Invalid competitive advantages (coming soon...) "Superior SEO" and "unique features" are not competitive advantages. Lacking an unfair advantage (coming soon...) You need one killer advantage that no one on Earth can beat you on. ('Cause you might get beaten on everything else!) No one said they'd buy it (coming soon...) You don't need statistically-significant studies before you begin, but it's astonishing how many founders blaze ahead before they've found even a single person willing to give them money. Incorrect positioning against competition (coming soon...) The two faults here are opposites: Believing that uniqueness means competition doesn't exist, or defining yourself by the competition instead of constructing your own message. No significant route to customers (coming soon...) If your marketing strategy is to run A/B tests and build RSS subscribers, you've already lost.

There's also this list, equally common but I didn't feel the urge to write an entire blog post on each one:

Unable to describe the company in 60 seconds. We've all heard of the elevator pitch, but when asked to produce it almost no one succeeded. This is important whether or not you're raising money because it means you understand your customers and why they buy your stuff. Building for yourself instead of the market. "Scratching your own itch" is how many great ideas begin, but it's not a business strategy. Often you assume your customer is the same as you — sees the problem the same way, wants to solve it your way, and wants to pay for it. But you're explicitly not like your customers; for one thing, you have enough initiative and insight to quit your job to start a company. It's easy to let your idiosyncratic preconceptions prevent you from observing what the larger market will accept. Pretending your faults don't exist. You have all sorts of shortcomings: First startup, inexperienced, ignorant about how "sales" works, buggy software, whatever. None of it's a problem if you're willing to acknowledge and cope with it, but if you persist in lying to me and your customers about it, that's a problem. (And a lie by omission is twice the lie.) Don't know what you don't know. I don't care that your resume doesn't prepare you for a startup — mine didn't either! But if your answer to any question is "How do I know? I just do," then I know right away you're not only ignorant but incapable of fixing that ignorance. How do I know this will result in your business drifting aimlessly until you finally run out of money? I just do.

Stay tuned!  The first post in the series goes up Monday.

It's time to retire the following phrases. They should no longer be used, ever, in any context except derisive mocking:

Fast and easy Putting customers first The Holy Grail of The leading provider of Legendary customer support

Also eschew these words, as devoid of meaning as a yogi's mantra and as useless as a simile that doesn't contribute new information:

Authentic Solution Genuine Powerful Secure Simple Innovative Insight Disruptive

These words have been corrupted by those who claim to honor their meaning but do not act accordingly. When a company claims to "put customers first" but then uses "Level 1 support" as a shield to prevent customers from intruding on profits, we realize talk is cheap. When a company claims to have "secure" payments but then 100,000 credit card numbers are stolen, we realize you don't need a permit to claim security. When a company claims to be "innovative and disruptive" but then pitches an idea you've heard ten times in the past month, it reminds us that if you have to say it, it's probably untrue. When 78% of "About Us" web pages claim "the leading provider" of something, we are no longer impressed. Like a song over-played on the radio, like a restaurant over-hyped in the magazines, repetition of even powerful, wonderful phrases can kill them. Oh I know 21% of you stopped reading as soon as you saw that "authentic" made the list, and shot down to the comments section to unleash a scathing missive explaining how "authenticity" is the prime mover of modern marketing, honorable salesmanship, and meaningful relationships. I agree! In fact all these words and phrases should theoretically carry meaning, but theory is for people who don't need to sell $2,600 more software by next Friday so they can make rent. If I had enough hubris to run around christening years, I would declare 2009 The Year of "Authentic." Enough! We get it! I respect the work of all those bloggers and Twitter-ers and lecturers and consultants who drove this word deep into our psyches. Indeed it's a tremendous gift: bringing concepts like authenticity, genuineness, and give-first-sell-later to the traditionally aggressive, non-engaging, selfish world of marketing. The more people honor this new code, the better for us all. Nevertheless, it's time to retire words like "authentic." The misuse is to too widespread, the abuse too deep. So what should you do instead? Be specific. Many of the dead words weren't especially illustrative to begin with. As far as I know, a "solution" just means product and/or service, so the word doesn't add information anyway. Instead, be specific and inspire me.

Instead of "easy" say "so straightforward, you won't need a manual." Instead of "inexpensive" say "just a dollar a day." Instead of "powerful" say "processes 6,253,427 requests daily." Instead of "disruptive" say "72% of our customers say they'll never go back to a normal email client."

Show, don't tell. Some dead words are descriptive, but they don't paint a picture. "Powerful" sounds nice I suppose, but how does that change my life? Showing something in action is more evocative than describing it.

Instead of saying it's fast, show a speed test (especially against competitors). Instead of saying it's easy, have a video demonstrating your tool solving someone's problem in 60 seconds flat. Instead of saying you have eager, responsive, intelligent tech support, put a "chat now" bar on every page of your website. Instead of a bullet-list of benefits, quote actual customers describing your impact on their lives.

Face it. My favorite way to start a sales pitch is to make fun of typical sales pitches. For example: I know you were hoping for a 22-slide PowerPoint deck with our mission statement and company history. I'm really sorry to disappoint! 'Cause I'm just going to start the demo and let you interrupt me with questions. Or: People claim that peer code review tools will do magic things like make your developers smarter or fix existing social problems with the team. Actually, if anything code review can magnify social issues! However, I do believe our tool will save you time and aggravation in these 4 specific ways .... so as we go through the demo, see if you agree. Because you're willing to say what others won't, especially when we all know it's the truth, you've earned credibility. Now folks are more open to your claims — even those that are well-worn. Own it. You can still use an abused word if you totally, 100% own the concept. You can claim "legendary customer service" if you back that with first-ring, human phone service, online chat from your home page, quick-response Twitter monitoring, and 15-minute turn-around time on tech support emails even at 3am on a Sunday. Be sure to communicate all that too, because if you lead with the dead phrase I'll leave before you get the chance to prove it. Be the change you wish to see in the world.   —Gandhi When old ideas become cliché, that's an implicit call for new ideas. This time around, can you lead instead of follow? Of course this is a bit unfair. Quick: Come up with a compelling new philosophy for human interaction and global communication, marketing, sales, and relationships! Yeah it's an unreasonable expectation, and not certainly required, but remember the best ideas often aren't (excuse the clichés) ground-breaking, innovative, out-of-the-box, Earth-shattering epiphanies. Often great ideas are a synthesis of other ideas with just a smidge of novel insight, or just putting into words what others sense but cannot articulate. This is the hardest and most time-consuming way to break out of the mundane, but also the most rewarding. And if you do come up with something, there's a lot of people who will love to help you spread the word. What else? What other phrases should be avoided? What are good alternatives? Leave a comment and join the conversation!

photo: buckaroobay When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, he showed off its high-resolution screen, touted its revolutionary features, and said things like “boom!” and “wow!” a lot. But that wasn’t what made the crowd go wild. “What should we price it at?” asked Jobs. “If you listen to the pundits, we’re going to price it at under $1000, which is code for $999.” He put a giant “$999” up on the screen and left it there for ages before finally going on. “I am thrilled to announce to you that the iPad pricing starts not at $999,” said Jobs, “but at just $499.” On-screen, the $999 price was crushed by a falling “$499.” Showmanship? Sure. But this stuff works. It’s called the anchoring effect, and it’s been well understood by psychologists for decades. Marketers use it against you all the time—but sometimes you can turn the tables, and I’ll tell you how. “Any time you have to estimate a numerical value, it turns out you’re very susceptible to the power of suggestion,” says William Poundstone, author of the new book Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It). “Any related value that you hear just before you make your estimate really does have this big statistical impact on what number you’re going to estimate.” In other words, at the moment Jobs says, “The pundits think we’re going to price it at under $1000,” this plants a seed in your mind: an iPad costs something like $1000. When he reveals the real price, you feel like you’ve just saved $500. If he said, “We were thinking of pricing it at $399, but we decided to go for $499,” that would feel like a ripoff—even though absolutely nothing has changed. You’ve been MSRPed off Retailers understand this effect very well. It’s why Manufacturer Suggested Retail Prices exist. You run into these all the time, especially in online shopping. Recently I went shopping for a pair of speakers, and I was pleased to note that they were marked down $60 from the MSRP. Of course, the MSRP is a completely made-up number, like Jobs’s $999. No one has ever paid MSRP for the speakers. I knew this, but it looked like a good deal anyway. In fact, studies have shown that “people who are more reflective, are, if anything, even more susceptible to anchoring,” says Poundstone. Phew! “So it’s definitely not just stupid people. This is really about the way the human mind works, and specifically about the way we pull a number out of the air, which we often have to do in a society that’s kind of obsessed with numbers and money.” Surely, though, if you know about anchoring and how it works, you’ll be relatively immune. Right? Hardly. In one study, the psychologists explained exactly what they were testing and told the subjects to be on guard against it. “When you answer the questions on the following pages,” they wrote, “please be careful not to have this contamination effect happen to you.” The warning didn’t work. Oh, and I bought the speakers. Anchoring everywhere Once you know about the anchoring effect, you see it all over the place. At the supermarket, why do they print a double price label showing the sale price and the regular price? Anchoring. It’s not a deal unless you can compare with the old price. (And if you think you can remember the old price, you’re wrong: shoppers are very bad at remembering what price they typically pay, even for their favorite items.) How about those menus where you can choose between the small and large plates of pasta? The high price of the large plate makes the small one look like a bargain—even though the small plate is probably more profitable for the restaurant and is the one they expected you to order all along. You know the restaurant with the $150 hamburger? What kind of idiot would order that! I’m going to stick with the rack of lamb for only $45. Making it work for you I’d like to give you some tricks for beating the anchoring effect, though don’t get your hopes up too much: as long as that’s a human brain you’re carrying around in your skull, that you’ll never succumb to it is pretty hopeless. Sometimes, however, you get to help set the price. And that’s when, if you can be quick and bold, the research is on your side. Priceless begins in the world of jury awards. Let’s leave aside the debate about whether personal injury awards are excessive and ask: If you’re a plaintiff’s attorney how much should you ask for? The more you get for you client, the more you get paid. But if you ask for too much, the jury may get angry and give you nothing, or much less than you would have gotten if you’d asked for a reasonable amount. That makes intuitive sense. But it’s wrong. The title of a famous paper sums it up: “The more you ask for, the more you get.” There is zero evidence for a rebound effect. Lawyers who ask for absurd, billion-dollar awards don’t get what they ask for…but they get more than if they’d asked for mere millions. Once that huge number gets into a juror’s head, anchoring takes over. That’s bad news if someone breaks their leg in your driveway. But if you’re bargaining for a new car or negotiating a salary, says Poundstone, “it’s really a good idea to get your number in first in a negotiation rather than letting the other guy name a number first.” If you’re selling something, ask for much more than you think you’re going to get. If you’re buying — especially if it’s a big purchase like a car or a house – bring a friend. “Have someone there with you who will take your side and will say, ‘Think of reasons why what you’re saying is right and what they’re saying is a ripoff,’” says Poundstone. “It really does have a measurable statistical effect.” Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go shopping. I’m out of cereal, and—what? Cap’n Crunch is $2 off? Better make it two boxes. Matthew Amster-Burton, author of the book Hungry Monkey, writes on food and finance from his home in Seattle.

This is a guest post by Mike Schoeffler, founder of iPhone running application Roadbud. He writes a refreshingly approachable fitness blog.

I hesitate to take issue with Jason’s Sacrifice your health for your startup — particularly after his wife gave her up-close-and-personal. His main point is dead on — we need to unhealthily obsess over our creations. But take this too far and your productivity drops off the cliff. As founder of a run/bike app startup, I can write off my workouts. I have a ready excuse for squeezing in a little “sweat equity” — I need to get in shape to know my customers’ issues. However, I also know firsthand that exercise increases total productivity. I avoid colds and I have more mental staying power. Plus, I have a better attitude when I don’t resemble shtik fleysh mit oygen (Yiddish for a piece of dead meat with eyes). Technology startups can be horrible for your body. Not mangle-your-arm-in-a-press horrible. But we have all sat in front of a computer for hours on end, tapping on the keyboard and lost in thought. Your only movement is reaching for the can of Mountain Dew or grabbing the bag of chips. Maybe you tear yourself away long enough to call for pizza delivery. Perfect for veal, not so much for humans. It wasn’t always this way. Joel Spolsky notes that in times long gone, programmers got washboard abs while waiting for the compiler. Think about exercise in light of a situation we’ve all faced: all-night coding sessions. Remember the all-nighters you pulled, heroically pumping out code until dawn to make a big deadline? Seemed like you were getting lots done while you took a bullet for the team. The truth is your programming was probably awful. Even a few hours’ sleep would have prevented your spaghetti mind from dumping spaghetti code. The worst part: as you got more sleep-deprived, the better the whole idea looked. Workouts are the same -- as you drop further into sloth, inactivity seems smart. Only the uncommitted have time for exercise, right? Exercise is pretty useful for anyone in a startup even without the health and stamina benefits. Just as your best ideas appear while you’re soaping up in the shower, elegant solutions spring up when you’re out running. Your mind is searching for something to think about besides your body’s pain. And while you don’t have a pen in the shower, you can always use your cellphone if a brainstorm strikes during a run. ... Let’s say you’re ready to start an exercise regimen. What next? Some of us already know how to work out – we’ve just given ourselves license to be lazy in this one area. If you’ve never been in shape, start gradually. Choose an activity you already enjoy (biking is my favorite). Regular exercise is far more important than going Charles Atlas overnight. Couch To 5K is a great place to start. A little goes a long way. You already knew you don’t have time to train for a marathon. Maybe get in a quick run before work – you’ll feel great all day. Or inch up to a hundred pushups while prepping for a sales call. Zen Habits has a detailed list of exercise hacks to help ease you into the habit. The critical thing is to just get started. Close your door, wipe the crumbs off your pants, and give me ten pushups now! What are your fitness tips? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Related posts:Sacrifice your health for your startupResponse: Sacrifice your health for your startupUnderbelly: What haughty startup bloggers don't tell youBehind the scenes of a viral post: Why your startup shouldn't copy 37signals or FogCreekPainful, Surreal, and Surprisingly Effective: The Personal Checklist

Eric Sink says that tradeshows are like sex: When it's good it's really really good, but when it's bad...  it's still pretty good.

A lot of tradeshows have been cancelled due to low attendance (which in turn is probably due to slashed travel budgets), but those which remain are that much more interesting. It's easy to waste time and money at tradeshows. It's not just the booth ($2k-$20k) and travel expenses ($1000/day including airline, hotel, rent car, shipping, and buying an extension cable at an outrageously overpriced convention center office supply center), it's the week of time spent at the show (including travel days) plus weeks of time spent preparing your strategy, crafting your sales pitches, organizing the booth crap, and chewing out the stoned guy at the print shop counter who claims to not see that the "red" in the color swatch is not the same as the "red" in your 6' x 6' banner. Tradeshows are a combination of high-level strategy and low-level minutiae, so a checklist comes in handy. 3-6 months before the tradeshow

Have a goal. Although there are many benefits of attending a show, you need a primary goal. A goal helps you make the decisions below and provides a yardstick for whether the tradeshow was "successful," and therefore whether you should do more. Examples:

Make a sale on the tradeshow floor Get at least 20 genuine prospects Talk with 10 industry leaders Find 10 good recruiting prospects Find 3 serious investors. Ask potential customers 3 specific things (market research)

Schedule a vendor presentation. Most shows allow vendors to give presentations, sometimes for a fee. Always do this. Even if just 20 people come to your talk, that's 20 people you get to talk to in depth for 45 minutes — far more valuable than talking to 100 of people at your booth for 5-60 seconds. I frequently get a few sales just from the presentation.

Decide on your main message. Just like your home page, you get 3 seconds to convince someone to stop at your booth. You'll need this message elsewhere (e.g. banner) so you need to decide what it is early on. Remember the goal is to get people to stop, not to explain everything about who you are and what you do! Boil it down to a single, short sentence.

Pick your booth. Booths go fast, and location does matter. Booths next to the bathroom are good even though they're "in the back" because everyone's going to hit the head. Booths near the front doors are good. Booths nearer to the center of the room are better than the ends. Booths at the ends of isles are good because you have a "corner" which means more traffic and your stuff can spill out over the edge.

Design your banner and handouts. Printing takes longer than you think because you'll need to iterate. I've never gotten the result I wanted from a print shop on the first try. Never. The colors on your screen aren't the colors on their paper. The Pantone® colors you selected for your banner won't look the same as the samples. The sales guy you see at the counter screws things up. You need time to iterate and complain. And to find the right person:

Find the techie in the back of the print shop. The first person you see at the sign shop is typically the sales guy, who knows nothing about Adobe InDesign, DPI, CMYK, vector vs. raster, or anything else important to making your stuff come out properly. Ask for the techie and talk to her directly.

Finish all the travel arrangements. Airplane tickets, hotels, rent cars. Fares are cheaper and there's no last-minute surprises with things being full.

Buy shirts and other swag. With customization (i.e. your logo on a shirt), it can sometimes take a while, so get this done early. At least have a "tradeshow shirt." It's the law.

1 month before the tradeshow

Postcard mailers work! I know, you thought "print media" was dead. Well not before a tradeshow, and not if you do it right. Best is to offer something cool/expensive at your booth, but only if they bring the postcard to you. This means they keep the postcard handy starting now and even during the tradeshow, which means whatever else you put on there (marketing material) gets seen repeatedly. It also means they seek you out on the tradeshow floor. Then, because you collect the card, you have their contact info (their name, company, and address), so you get to follow up later. Don't forget to put your booth number on there!  (Another reason to pick the booth early.)

Emails probably work. Because you can use the tradeshow's name in the subject of the email, people will probably read your email blast.

Set up meetings. Yes meetings! Tradeshows are a rare chance to get face-time with:

Editors of on-line and off-line magazines. Often overlooked, editors are your key to real press. I've been published in every major programming magazine; almost all of that I can directly attribute to talking with editors at tradeshows! It works. Bloggers you like, especially if you wish they'd write about you Customers Potential customers currently trialing your stuff Your vendors Your competition Potential partners

Proactively set meetings. Call/email everyone you can find. It's easy to use email titles which will be obviously non-spam such as "At [Tradeshow]: Can we chat for 5 minutes?" I try to get at least 5 meetings per day. Box of everything. I can't tell you how many times we've been saved by a box of stuff. A small, cheap plastic box from Walmart is fine. You won't use all the stuff every time, but I guarantee you will use an unpredictable subset every time. The box should contain:

pens (multiple, different colors) Sharpie Scotch tape masking tape extension cord electric plug bar post-it notes rubber bands tiny stapler highlighter paper clips scissors all-in-one tool (screwdriver, can opener) medicine (Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, DayQuil) zip-ties Generic business cards (in case anyone runs out)

Comfortable shoes. You'll be standing for much longer than you're used to; comfortable shoes are a must. Attendees can't see your shoes so sneakers or clogs might be OK; you can change into your pumps when you leave the booth. You can also bring floor pads designed for people who stand all day, or for a fee most venues can put padding under your booth's carpeting.

At the tradeshow

A/B test your pick-up line. This is no different than your landing pages! A tradeshow is a wonderful place to test attention-grabbers. What gets people to stop? To laugh? To say "OK, fair enough, tell me more?" Test all show long. After the 100th pitch, you'll know exactly what gets people's attention — now put that on your home page! Ask questions instead of pitching. Everyone else "pitches at" people; be different and actually have a conversation.  Good conversationalists are genuinely interested in the other person — what do they do, what are they interested in.  If you start chatting they will actually ask you for a pitch as a form of reciprocation.  Then you've got permission to "sell," and they're truly listening. Don't ask how they're doing. Your opening line should engage them with something you specifically have to offer. "Hello, how's it going" is not interesting or unique. Even just a simple "Are you interested in [thing you do]" is better, although still weak. Ask questions, don't just transmit. Sure you want to pitch your stuff, but this is a fantastic opportunity for direct market research on your potential customers! Come up with 3-5 questions that you're going to ask of people who walk by the booth, then ask away. No need to carefully record the results — the big trends will be obvious and the rest is noise. Stand, don't sit. Sitting looks like you don't want to be there. It's uninviting. The head-height differential is psychologically off-putting. I know your feet hurt; stand. Get into the aisle. Just because there's a table there doesn't mean you have to stand behind it. Break out of your 10'x10' prison and engage people in the aisle. Best is to have someone inside the booth to talk to folks who walk up and another in the aisle getting attention and directing folks inward. Especially during high-traffic, just being a barrier in the middle forces people to squeeze by your booth, which gives you a chance to engage. Learn from the guy in the bear suit! Moving pictures rock. When you're sitting at a bar and there's a TV behind the person you're talking to, it's really hard not to look, right? We tend to look at moving images, especially when they're bright. So your booth should have a big monitor or better yet a bright projector. Don't just show a static screenshot or PowerPoint image, and don't leave it stuck wherever the last demo left off — get a demo movie going and catch some eyes. We did this at Smart Bear and I can't count the number of times another vendor said "OMG we have to do that next year." Always be able to demo. Nothing is more sticky than a live demo. Not swag, not brochures, not clever phrases, not raffles. That other stuff is good — both for getting traffic and as a reminder — but you need a demo to make the experience memorable. I prefer demoing on a projector so it's big and passers-by get hooked as well, but a large monitor works too. Large. Not your laptop screen. Make notes on business cards. You'll talk to hundreds of people; you'll never remember what one guy said or what he wants. Always write it down on their business card. If they have one of those silly cards where you can't make notes (why people, why?), use a post-it from your box-o-stuff to keep notes together with the card. Sales people aren't enough. Most attendees don't want to talk to sales people anyway; if they're interested at all they want to geek out with their peers. Air out some of those folks who typically don't get to go on sales calls. Don't depend on the Internet. Tradeshow Internet is spotty at best. Your demos and note-taking must operate without being online. Use LinkedIn every night. Most people will accept, especially if you add the contact the same day and reference the conference. Take advantage of this opportunity to significantly expand your online network. Walk the floor and talk to everyone. As a fellow vendor, you can commiserate about how the show is going and how it compares to other shows. Try to think of a way your two companies could work together; usually it doesn't work out but the discussion helps them remember who you are. Try to skip past their salespeople. Meet the founder if she's there. Note the jokes. People will make fun of you. Actually, if they don't, maybe that's a bad sign because they can't figure out what you do. Usually you get some wise-cracks. That's interesting, right? Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. Free food. Works better than almost any other free thing. The more "real" the food is (i.e. not just candy) the better. Cookies are good. Put it at the center of your booth so it's harder for someone to take without talking. Raffle something. I'm not a fan of raffles as a way to get sales, but I do like them at tradeshows because it gets a crowd to appear at your booth. Crowds make other people think your booth is interesting. We've seen people stop by our booth a day after a big crowd saying "I didn't want to stop yesterday because you guys were swamped, but I guess whatever you're doing is interesting!" Make sure you have to provide contact info to enter (fill form, scan badge, drop business card). Those leads won't be particularly qualified but it's better than nothing. Take names instead of pushing brochures.  Attendees get dozens of pieces of paper pushed into their hands and pre-filled in their tote bags.  Even if yours is clever, funny, and useful, it's still going to be lost.  Instead of hand-outs, scan their badge or get a business card, and mail them something.  It will be waiting on their desk one morning without all the distraction of a tradeshow. Quality not quantity. It's cliché, but it's better to have six solid conversations with people who will buy your software than to give away 200 pieces of branded swag to people who can't remember who you are.

After the tradeshow

Follow up! Attendees are saturated with presentations and vendor pitches, so there's a 99% chance they've forgotten about you. Yes, even if they took your oh-so-memorable swag or your fabulously-designed brochure. It's up to you to follow up and remind them who you were, and take them up on their offer to get a demo, trial the software, or look at a draft of an article you want published.

Apply what you learned about selling. You talked to hundreds of people, pitching a hundred different ways, with mixed results. What did you learn? Some questions to get you started:

Which one-liners got people's attention, and what did people not relate to? How can you incorporate the successful one-liners in your home page? What new AdWords text do you want to try? How should you change your 2-minute demo? What were people saying about your competition? What were your best retorts?

Apply what you learned about your software. Having to demo the product 50 times always churns up invaluable product information. Some questions to get your started:

What features did people ask about which you already have, but it wasn't obvious? What features did people keep asking for which you don't have? What part of your demo seemed to drag because your workflow wasn't easy enough? What part confused viewers because the interface wasn't obvious? What terminology made no sense to newbies? What did people hate about your competitors, and how can you maintain that advantage? What did people love about your competitors, and how can you close that gap?

What are your tips? Leave a comment.  I'll incorporate ideas into the main text. Contributors:

Jason Calcanis, Mahalo Ferruh Mavituna, Mavituna Security Jay Neely, Social Strategist Joseph Fung, serial entrepreneur Michael Trafton, owner BlueFish Development Group

Related posts:Painful, Surreal, and Surprisingly Effective: The Personal ChecklistFive ways to listen to customers instead of goin' fishin'Love the messengerToo small to fail: How startups can grow in recessionsAvatar Marketing: Sell to Carol

In the last post I beat you to death about ditching your business plan but failed to provide an alternative. Okay okay, "Planning == Bad," but the supposed benefits of planning are still important: designing for profitability, understanding your customers and competitors, focusing your attention, deciding what's worth doing next, changing directions, and ensuring the founders agree on important issues. To help you, I'm stealing a trick from therapists.

Cartoon by Andertoons Therapists don't tell you what to do. Rather, they ask probing questions that get you to discover for yourself what is true for you, your situation, and what you want. You're smart. You'll make good decisions. But you also get bogged down in daily minutiae and putting out fires, meanwhile missing the big picture. That's where this article comes in: To splash cold water on your face, forcing you to face reality and continue to defend or change the important choices inside your business. What follows is your startup therapy session. Having to think through and answer these questions forces you to identify what you need to do today to seek profits and growth.

In one sentence, what does your product do and who buys it? In one sentence, why does someone buy your product? These are surprisingly difficult. The shorter and more precise your answers, the more you understand why you exist. If the answer is, "I honestly don't really know why people give us money," that's something to remedy immediately. If you have an answer, is it because you have hard evidence that this is how your customers perceive you and why they give you money, or just because you believe it? "Evidence" means emails and Tweets and testimonials that use those words exactly; otherwise you're likely interpreting their feedback to match your expectations. (I find myself constantly guilty of this disconnect.) If you don't have evidence, it is OK to have a hypothesis but you should be concerned about collecting proof and disproof. If you do know the answer, these two sentences should drive your marketing efforts. If these sentences aren't on your home page, why the hell aren't they? Is there anything else more compelling to potential customers? At the least, these represent the themes that drive your marketing campaigns. What one thing is most responsible for preventing sales? (e.g. people not knowing you exist, pricing, not enough product features, unorganized sales strategy, look-and-feel of website, haven't identified pain points, ...)

Cartoon by Andertoons Most little companies aren't honest about this, yet it's possibly the most important question you could ask. For example, I'm an engineer, so my first answer to "Why don't you have more customers?" is almost always:  "Because we need this feature." You hear some potential customer say "we will buy if you do XYZ" so you conclude that if you implemented XYZ people would start breaking your door down. But is that really the case? If you added one feature and maybe satisfied that one customer (assuming they wouldn't ask for a second thing, and in my experience they usually do), would that get you 100 more sales? For those hundreds of people who downloaded your software and never bought — is the reason "not enough features?" For the hundreds of thousands of people who never came to your website in the first place, or hit the front page and left after three seconds, is the solution "more features?" When you honestly ask yourself this question, it will naturally lead into things you can do right away to get more people to the site, into a trial, and/or into a sale. Don't just rest on what comes easiest. What's one thing you could do to get more feedback from customers, potential customers, or sales you've lost? You already know that external feedback is the only way to empirically determine how to build products people want to buy. Maybe you can't drop everything to solicit feedback (although folks like Eric Ries say you should), but surely it's worth one day every month to go out of your way to collection information from the field. To get the ideas flowing, here are eleven ways to get more feedback, most of which take less than a day to implement. If you had zero revenue from now on, on what date would you run out of money?

Cartoon by Andertoons The first thing this does is force you to nail down your monthly expenses and accounts payable. Second, you know the length of your fuse even in event of disaster (if you have revenue) or if you never manage to land a customer (if you're just starting out). More than that, knowing your "padding" as I used to call it is helpful in making decisions like "Can I afford to try this Risky Expensive Thing," such as making your first hire or trying a $20,000 media blitz. Whenever you're contemplating a new expensive idea that could be awesome but could be setting money on fire, your fuse date helps you know how much time you're risking — time to recover if your bet doesn't pay off. Finally, knowing "The day my business could die" helps focus your attention on activities that bring in revenue. If someone handed you $100,000 today, how would you spend it to maximize future profits? This gets you to crystallize what cost-centric activities would most help your business. We get caught up in free-but-takes-tons-of-time marketing and development activities — and most of the time that's a good way to think — but sometimes it's still true that "you have to spend money to make money." Sometimes the "thing you could do" is so compelling, it might mean you should raise a small angel round or consider debt. Typically it's best to get by with minimal debt and investment, but if the "thing you could do" is transformative, you might reconsider. If you were forced to hire someone today, how would you define her job such that she would contribute enough revenue to cover her expense? I know, you can't afford anyone right now, no one can do as good a job as you, and you don't even know that you'll ever hire someone. That's OK, that's not the point of this question. This gets you to ferret out what tasks are being dropped by the wayside because you've got higher-value things to work on, because you're having to fight fires, or maybe because you've got your priorities wrong. If you honestly can't imagine that there's anything a full-time person could do that would generate enough revenue to cover their salary, that's not a bad thing. But often this churns up one or two very-part-time tasks which really ought to be done but aren't. No need for a new employee of course, but maybe you should re-prioritize those tasks next month. Sometimes you come up with a good answer, which means you should contemplate help. "Help" doesn't necessarily mean a proper, 40 hours/week (OK, who are we kidding, 60 hours/week) employee. It could be a part-time consultant. It could be an intern.  It could be an outsourced office assistant. It could be a new partner willing to work for stock. Which of your business operations do you hate? Do you like creating new features but hate tech support? Enjoy product demos but hate cold-calls? Need to have your arms around company finances but hate bookkeeping? Love writing ads but hate dealing with ad sales agents? Get excited about your field of expertise but hate writing blog posts and Twittering? Part of why you're in business for yourself is creating something from scratch and delighting customers, but the fact is that most business operations just suck. You can't justify avoiding important tasks because they're not fun. I know — I'm the worst procrastinator when it comes to those things! It's useful to identify these undesirable-but-necessary tasks because you can do something about it:

If you shut off email, Twitter, chat, and the phone, and just buckle down, you might be able to get through some of these tasks in under 15 minutes. Bookkeeping is like that. Get it off your plate; you'll feel better. Mundane tasks might be outsourceable. I've found that "virtual assistance" services (like Four Star Service in Austin) are surprisingly affordable if you have a lot of little time-consuming tasks. See if your existing vendors are willing to do some of your tasks for a small fee. For example accountants often provide bookkeeping services at a lower hourly rate. Consider an intern or consultant. Before you argue that the cost is too great, factor in the lost revenue due to you working on those tasks. Can you share the burden with your co-founder or employees? Maybe they don't hate it as much as you do; you can trade hated activities. Or switch off.

If you're still stuck on not wanting to spend any money to save time, remember what Dharmesh says: Act as if someone is paying you $1000/hour for any activities that improve sales (making, selling, and your customer's happiness), and for everything else they're paying you $10/hour. It's accurate.  (Before you argue, don't forget about the cost of lost sales.)

What initiatives could be done half-assed without significant impact? I know, this is a shitty question. If you're like me, you are that aggravating combination of perfectionist and control-freak that on the one hand leads to stellar work but on the other hand means some things take too long. Some parts of your business are core to your success: Which features you implement, how you present yourself and interact with customers, discovering how and why people give you money. But the fact is your to-do list is infinitely long and you have to pick your battles. Your "Contact Me" page has to exist but it doesn't matter what it looks like. Every blog post doesn't have to be a work of art. Your Google Ads need variety (for testing), not hours of wordsmithing. It's better to have an eBook about anything than to have no eBook at all. If it can be done half-assed, and it's not going to impact revenue, maybe it should be half-assed. Allow yourself to delegate (because it's OK if it's not done exactly how you would do it). Push more out the door. If you could get one solid hour of advice from a guru you respect, what would you discuss and what would be the goal of the meeting? This is a fun way of asking: "What knowledge/feedback/direction is critical to your business right now, and which you're uncertain about, and which you feel other people are expert in?" Phrasing the question this way also leads to solutions. For example, maybe you should set aside 4 hours to get your hands on that guru's materials (blog, book, podcasts) and immerse yourself not just in advice but in their mindset. Or email them and see if you can get some advice! Or find other people that guru respects and who might be more accessible. Or hell, ask me! I publish my email address you know.

What tips do you have? Leave a comment!

Related posts:Sacrifice your health for your startupPut down the compiler until you learn why they're not buyingUnderbelly: What haughty startup bloggers don't tell youDon't write a business plan2000 feature requests: Our foray into Uservoice

  The iPhone will always be part of a much bigger picture. How well you address human and environmental factors will greatly determine the success of your product. All too often, iPhone developers create products in isolation from their customers. In order to create really appealing applications, developers must stop focusing only on the mechanisms of the apps. Zoom out: understand the person using the application, as well as the complex environmental factors surrounding that person.To better understand the context of these design challenges, we’ll highlight several levels of human and environmental factors.Also consider our related articles:iPhone design mistakes: Over-DesigniPhone App Design TrendsHow to Create Your First iPhone ApplicationLevel 1: You Are Here. To Create An App That Customers Love, Zoom OutLevel 1: The app itself.This is how many developers view their apps. As a developer, you have a vision of what your product should look like and why customers will turn their attention to it. However, if you observe your product so closely, you may put it in the wrong context and design it for the wrong purposes and for the wrong users. This is why you need to zoom out.Level 2: A person is using this app.That person has specific goals and challenges. In the section below we’ll start by exploring some of the most prominent — and most ignored — human factors pertaining to the iPhone. We’ll discuss basic physical ergonomics, visual limitations and common design mistakes.Level 3: That person is using this app in a specific environment.Step back and you’ll see that the app is a part of a complex social environment. It plays but a relatively small role in communication between people and helping people accomplish bigger goals. This is where the social components comes into play: networking, community, social-driven websites and applications and many other things create the environment — or the context — in which the application will be used.Level 4: The environment is part of a greater culture.Your ability to address the unique needs of different cultures will affect the success of your product. Ignoring them is too expensive, especially if your app sells worldwide. Here it is important to understand that the environment is a part of global networking. You need to be aware of cultural differences, traditions and metaphors in order to create an application that will not only gain popularity in certain local circles, but will also have a global success.Level 2: Understand The Person’s Needs And Limitations“Measure twice and cut once”: an effective strategy indeed. For you, the iPhone app developer, this means that you have to step back and answer these questions before you start coding:Who will be using your application?What are the capabilities of that person?What are the limitations of that person?Answering these questions will broaden your perspective and prepare you to address your customer’s needs. A whole Human Factors profession is dedicated to just that.Basic Physical ErgonomicsHere are a couple of the most important physical-, cognitive- and ergonomic-related truths about the iPhone.1. Our fingers are not mouse pointers.Remember this property of our fingertips: their surface area is not equal to one pixel. In many applications, tappable objects are way too small, making the interface frustrating to use. Here’s one example: in iFitness, different muscle groups are indicated with red pins. Tapping a pin brings up the name of that muscle. And if you tap the name, you get a list of exercises that develop that muscle.The pins are twice as small as those used in the Google Maps app. Tapping the pin you want is very hard, because the surface of your fingertip covers an area of three or more pins. You end up tapping repeatedly on the area, enabling random pins, wishing you could sharpen your finger. After more than a few tries, you get lucky and hit the right one.Which of these pins will be activated when you tap on it?Here are some ways to solve these ergonomic challenges:Make buttons and other tappable objects bigger.If making a button bigger is impossible, then enlarge the clickable area to be bigger then the button itself.Reduce the number of options on each screen, and make the selection process sequential (e.g. Arm Muscles → Biceps).Implement multi-touch gestures within the interface. For example, selecting a muscle group in iFitness would be made easier by introducing a two-finger zoom feature.2. We’re not superheroes, unfortunately.App designers need to take vision limitations into account. Mobile phones tend to be used in places with worse lighting conditions than computers. Think about those people who will be using your app on a bumpy bus or train or walking down a sunny street. Even if the technology is useful and perfectly executed, people will be reluctant to use the app if they find it hard to see what’s going on. Here are a few examples of potentially useful apps that do not account for vision limitations.TweetDeckFish-tycoonHere are some ways to avoid these mistakes:Choose only the elements that are absolutely necessary. Make them bigger, and get rid of everything else. If needed, create additional screens with fewer options.Remember that pixel dimensions on the iPhone are smaller than those on your computer screen. So, screenshots viewed on your computer’s iPhone emulator look larger than they would on the iPhone itself, even though the resolution is the same.The author holds an iPhone (163 ppi) in front of Apple Cinema’s 30-inch display (~100 ppi). Your iPhone screen layout may look fine on a computer emulator, but don’t be fooled: it will appear much smaller on the iPhone because of its smaller pixel dimensions.Level 3: Understand The Challenges Specific To The User’s EnvironmentGoals and EnvironmentYour app will usually play a relatively small role in helping the user achieve a bigger goal. The better you understand what goals people have and what they need to achieve them, the better you can design your app to satisfy those needs. Mobile phones are often used in loud, distracting environments. A simple stroll through town brings plenty of noisy distractions (cars, dogs, mail carriers, etc.). Consider the following examples. Which voice memo app would do a better job? Apple Voice Memosvs.iTalkAlthough Apple Voice Memos looks nice, iTalk addresses the average user’s goals and environment much better. Think about it: why would someone prefer to record a voice memo over writing a note? The audio format has fewer advantages than simple text. You can’t scan, edit or enhance audio files as easily as you can text. In most scenarios, text is a much more convenient format in which to exchange information.So, why and, more importantly, when would people use voice memos? When they are not able to type. The most common time is probably while driving.According to the New York Times‘ summary of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s findings, drivers who text have a 23-times greater risk of a collision than drivers who don’t text. Which application would be easier to use in this case? The one with the big shiny mic and the record button that is small and hard to reach (especially for right-handed people)? Or the one with the red record button half the size of the screen? Certainly the latter.Confirming for the user that the recorder is activated is important, too. Which interface communicates the device’s status more clearly? Where do you tap when you’re done? Apple Voice Memosvs.iTalkBased on which design works better overall, iTalk wins. Apple Voice Memo looks great when you’re checking it out on a friend’s phone but performs poorly in a real-world context.Mobile Phones, Networking and CommunityThe mobile phone is, without a doubt, a social tool. The greater the number of people involved, the more engaging the experience is. Think about it: if you were the only one with a phone, it wouldn’t be very useful. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are driven by the understanding that we are social beings — we want to share! Imagine how dramatically designs that foster greater social interaction could change the mobile world.With the seemingly endless ways to capture and share information, many people feel overwhelmed with information. To help them cope, designers must exploit the iPhone’s platform to make their applications as efficient as possible. Here are some inspiring examples:Bump“Bump makes swapping contact information and photos as simple as bumping two phones together. No typing, no searching a list for the right person, no mistakes.” (iTunes Store description)Mover“Ever wished you could send something to the iPhone right next to you? Do it with style with Mover.”Loopt“Loopt transforms your mobile phone into a social compass to discover and navigate the world around you. Use Loopt to see who’s around, what to do, and where to go.”How Loopt works (video):Level 4: The Environment Is Part Of A Greater Culture.Your ability to address the unique needs of different cultures will affect the success of your product. Ignoring them is too expensive, especially if your app sells worldwide. Design should adapt to regional challenges. Jacob Nielsen, a leading usability expert, gives us an illustration of this: “In Sweden, the Automatic Teller Machines have very large buttons. I hadn’t noticed this particular design element on previous visits, which have usually been in warmer months. In 1996 I was in Stockholm in February and immediately realized why the ATM buttons are so big: you can press them wearing thick gloves.”Such insights are gained only by understanding the product in its real-world context. Here is the graphic designer’s point of view: “… Understanding the object in context moves graphic design from a purely formal arena to a social and political one.”—Steven Heller and Karen Pomeroy in “Design Literacy,” Allworth Press, New York, 1997.More wisdom from Nielsen: “A system must match the user’s cultural characteristics. This goes beyond simply avoiding offensive icons; it must accommodate the way business is conducted and the way people communicate in various countries.”Apple studied American users and addressed their goals. That’s why the iPhone is so popular in US. But it hasn’t succeeded in Japan. The handset is selling so poorly there that they are giving them away for free.Conclusion: Excellence Comes From Hard WorkDesigning a great app isn’t a simple task. Jacob Nielsen recently asserted that “the mobile user experience is still miserable.” Extracting user insights from testing is a challenge. People have difficulty telling you what they want; they usually only know it when they see it. But developers don’t have to tackle user research alone. Interaction designers are trained to find relevant user groups, talk to customers and read between the lines. They understand how real-world context affects an application’s design.It takes a lot of leg work, but your efforts to understand user needs will be rewarded. The forefront of mobile technology is an exciting place to be.Related postsPlease consider our related articles:iPhone design mistakes: Over-DesigniPhone App Design TrendsHow to Create Your First iPhone ApplicationSpecial thanks to Larissa Itomlenskis.(al)© Alexander Komarov for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags:

It's a big decision to make your first hire, because what you're really deciding is whether you want to keep a lifestyle business or attempt to cross the chasm and maybe even get rich.

(Cartoon by Andertoons) Assuming you're really in the market for another pair of hands to screw things up help out, the question is how to acquire resumes, how to pair them down, and how to identify someone who is going to work well in your company. There's already a lot of great advice about hiring at little startups. Before I give you mine, here are some of my favorite articles, in no particular order:

Smart, and gets things done by Joel Spolsky — The classic guide to what to do during the interview and how to know whether to "hire" or "not hire." Why startups should ALWAYS compromise when hiring by Dharmesh Shah — There are many attributes you'd like to see in a hire, but compromise is necessary; here's how to do it. Five quick pointers on startup hiring and Disagreeing with Entrepreneur Magazine by Dharmesh Shah — Assorted tips, all important. Hazards of hiring by Eric Sink — Great tips, including some specific to hiring developers (for more on the latter, here's another). Date before getting married Part 1 and Part 2 by Dharmesh Shah — A strong argument in favor of working with a person rather than relying on interviews.

I'm not going rehash those or attempt a "complete guide to hiring." But I do have some fresh advice you might not have seen before:

Hire "startup-minded" people If a person just left IBM, is she a good fit for your startup? If she left because she couldn't stand the crushing bureaucracy, the tolerance of incompetence, and the lack of any visibility into what customers actually wanted, then she sounds like a person ready for a startup. Or therapy. On the other hand, if during the interview she asks how often you do performance reviews, that means she doesn't understand the startup culture.  If she says "I thrive in environments with clear requirements, written expectations, and defined processes," run away as fast as your little legs can carry you. Startups are chaotic, rules change, and there is no "job description." It's better to make a strong decision that turns out wrong, and admit it, than to plan ahead or wait for instructions. Potential earnings (e.g. stock, performance bonuses) are preferred to guaranteed earnings (e.g. salary, benefits). You already live by this Code of Turmoil because you're the entrepreneur; you have no choice. But normal people do have a choice and most people abhor chaos. Big companies don't behave this way, and most people are accustomed to working for big companies. You have to hire someone comfy with the bedlam of startup life.

Write a crazy job description You're not just hiring any old programmer or salesman, you're hiring employee #1. This person helps set the culture of the company. This person has to mesh with your personality 100%. You're going to be putting in long hours together — if they don't get your jokes, it's not going to work. So why wait until the interview to see whether your personalities mesh? Put it right in the job description. Be funny, reflect your personality, reflect the uniqueness of your company. A requirement can be "God-like Power over the Java Virtual Machine." A job description can include "wrangling with MySQL, making Javascript do what Bill Gates never intended, and changing the pellets in the urinals." You should see the results in the cover letters. If after a job posting like that the person is still sending the generic B.S. cover letter, you know they're not for you. If they respond in kind, good sign. And anyway, one day they might actually need to change those pellets, and then you've got it in writing!

Do not use a recruiter On young startups using recruiters, Brian Menell sums it up nicely: "If you find yourself wanting to hire a recruiter, hit yourself in the head with a frying pan until the feeling goes away." You need to hire an absolute superstar, and recruiters are not in the business of helping you find superstars. In fact, their incentives are exactly opposite yours. Here's why. Recruiters are like real estate salesmen: They make money when you hire someone. They make the same amount of money whether it takes you four days or four months to find that someone. So every day that passes, every additional resume you request, every additional interview you set up, the recruiter is making less and less money per hour. In fact, there's a floor that the recruiter can't go below, so the more you take your time to find the right person the more they'll push you to settle for someone you've already rejected. The exception is a recruiter who works by the hour rather than for a hiring bounty. These are hard to find but they do exist.  I've had luck only in this case.

Resume are (mostly) useless Think about your own resume. Is there anything on there that qualifies you to run your own company? Not just "experience" generically but really relevant knowledge? I'll bet there's very little. But it doesn't matter, right? Right, so it doesn't matter with your first few employees either. Resumes are useful only as talking points. That is, when you have a candidate on the phone, you can use the resume to ask about previous experience, test their knowledge of technologies they claim to have, etc. Resumes are conversation-starters, but they imply nothing about whether the person is right for you. One particularly useful trick with resumes is to dig deep on a detail. Pick the weirdest technology in the list, or pick on one bullet point they listed two jobs ago that seems a little odd to you. Then go deep. Don't let them say "It's been a while" — if they can't talk about it, how can they claim it's experience they're bringing along?

Writing well is a requirement I don't care if this person is going to spend 60 hours a week writing inscrutable code that only a Ruby compiler could love. I don't care if the job description is "sit in that corner and work multi-variate differential equations." Everyone has to be able to communicate clearly. In a modern startup everyone will be writing blog entries, twittering, facebooking, and God only knows what the hell other new Goddamn technology is coming next. But whatever it is you can bet it will require good communication skills. In a small startup there's no layer separating employees from customers. Everyone talks to everyone. You can't have your company represented by someone who can't be trusted with a customer. In fact, everyone needs to be able to not just talk to customers, but even sell them. Remember, even tech support is sales! In a small startup everyone has to understand each other's nuances. There's enough crap you're having to figure out without also having to decipher an email. There's enough about your business you don't understand without having to understand garbage sentence fragments in a README file. Therefore, some part of the interview process has to include free-form writing. In fact, there's a particularly useful time for that....

Screen candidates with mini-essay questions When you post a job listing — especially on large-scale sites like Monster or Craig's List — expect a torrent of resumes. It's not unusual to get 100 in a day. You need a time-efficient system for winnowing them down to a small handful worthy of an interview. Screening resumes is not an option, because as you now know resumes are useless. Besides, you don't have time to read hundreds of resumes. Instead, prepare an email template that asks the applicant to write a few paragraphs on a few topics. For example: Thanks for sending us your resume. The next step in our hiring process is for you to write a few paragraphs on each of the following topics. Please reply to this email address with your response:

Why do you want to work at [company]? Describe a situation in your work-life where you failed. Describe a time when you accomplished something you thought was impossible. (Can be work-related or personal)

Thanks for your interest in [company] and I hope to hear from you soon. Here's what happens: First, most people never respond. Good riddance! Second, you'll get lazy-ass responses like "I want to work at your company because I saw you are hiring" and ludicrous answers like "I have never failed at anything." Resist the temptation to reply with, "You just did." Maybe 10% of the respondents will actually answer the questions, and you'll know in two minutes whether this person can communicate and, yes, even whether they seem fun, intelligent, or interesting. One exception to this rule: If the cover-letter is truly wonderful, that's a rare, great sign and you can probably skip right to the phone interview.

Always be hiring The rule of thumb is that it takes 3-6 months to hire a really good person. Why so long?

Good people are rare, so it takes a while to dig them up. Like truffles. Or weeds. No, not like weeds. Good people won't change jobs more often than once a year — probably more like every 3-4 years, especially if their employer appreciates their abilities and compensates them accordingly. So you have to find this person in their "once every three years" window. Good people gets lots of good job offers (yes, even in this economy) so when you do find one and give them the writing test and then the phone interview and then the in-person interview and then discuss compensation and then provide a formal written offer... there's a good chance they just accepted an awesome offer somewhere else. (This happened to me all the time at Smart Bear.)

This means if you start hiring when you really need someone, that's too late. You'll be "in need" for months. This means you need to be hiring constantly. So how do you "hire constantly" without being drowned in resumes and interviews? The answer comes from another attribute of good people:

Good people choose where they want to work, not vice versa. They hear about a cool company, and when they're interested in new work, they call you.

Your company has to be a place good people will seek, not where you have to go fishing. How do you manage that, especially when you're small? Ideas:

Develop your blog/Twitter so you have a steady stream of eyeballs from people who like you. Attend local meet-ups and user groups. Meet the woman who runs the group — she knows everyone worth knowing. Sponsor a meet-up at your office. Don't have an office? Co-sponsor with someone who does, like another company or a co-working place. (OtherInbox is a great example of this; they sponsor the monthly Austin on Rails user group and the annual Lone Star Ruby Conference, and as a result all the best Ruby developers in Austin already want to work for OtherInbox.) Ask your friends for resumes of people they didn't hire but who they liked. That is, people who are good but just weren't a fit for that company. Try to get your "Jobs" page to rank well in local-only search. So e.g. "java programmer job in austin tx," not something impossible like "java programmer." Take everyone you know to lunch periodically and ask if they know of a candidate. Yes you can ask them by email but often being in-person brings out more information. Or maybe one of them will be interested himself. (That's happened to me a few times.)

Don't be trapped by what you think hiring "should" be You're hiring a friend, a trusted partner, someone you'll be spending 10 hours a day with for the foreseeable future. You're not hiring a Systems Engineer III for IBM or a Senior Regional Sales Manager for Dell. The "rules" of HR don't apply to you (except the law). Think of it more like getting married than hiring an underling. Going with your gut is not wrong. Do you have more tips for hiring? Leave a comment and join the conversation!

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In the first part of a series on the UX = Brand, the adventure of a web designer starts in a McDonald’s, where he discovers that there is a worm hole between the world of Branding and User Experience Design. Years later he learns that it is the Interface that connects both worlds. This is the first part in a series. There he goes, the web designer, stepping up to the counter of an empty McDonald’s at 3 o’clock in the morning. He is scanning the overhead menu, putting a cheeseburger in his mental shopping basket. “Cheezubahga, onegaishimasu,” we hear him say, “with an iced tea.” Waiting for his order, he examines the wireframe of the display on the cash register, the mechanical logic of the deep fat fryers, the input/output logic of the ice cream dispenser. Coming late from work, with his mind still in design mode, he starts tracing the restaurant’s interaction model, drawing arrows from the entrance to the counter to the tables to the trash cans; seeing how the conveyor-belt kitchen, the trays with the paper liners, the bolted down seats and the meals comprise a single, complete customer interface. “They must have run usability tests,” he thinks, taking his tray to the table. Hungry for Food = Hungry for Words When we are hungry for food, we follow similar patterns as when we are hungry for information. Similar, infantile patterns. At both times, we fall into a mode of dull impatient demand. We want everything immediately with as little interaction as possible. We want exactly what we expect in the way we are used to get it. When hungry, the last thing we fancy is thinking or making difficult decisions. Because, well, that’s how our body works. And that’s why after a hard day of work we often sleepwalk to McDonald’s.

When we are hungry for knowledge, we inevitably become mentally passive and use all our energies to receive information. Because that’s how our brain works. And that’s why we blindly return to Google search when looking for data. McDonald’s = Google McDonald’s is designed for you to switch off your brain as soon as you enter the door. Buying and consuming a Cheeseburger is an automated routine — simple and mindless, like tying shoelaces or riding a bicycle. You don’t need to analyze, guess, evaluate or make difficult decisions because McDonald’s is built in a way that minimizes conscious action. Once learned, the transitions between each step of the ordering process are automatic and seamless. Moreover, in any of its franchises anywhere in the world, McDonald’s provides one consistent user experience. Once learned, ordering, buying and eating becomes an easy routine. It’s just like Google: blunt, focused and clear. Both McDonalds and Google have a lot in common: both are designed for you to switch off your brain as soon as you enter the “door”. McDonald’s was driving “user centred design” to the extreme before interaction designers even thought of the notion. From its logo to its tables, from its hamburgers to its trash cans, it’s all designed to be practical and useful rather than aesthetically pleasing. This functional approach is applied all the way down to the cheeseburger. Standardized in shape, taste, and consistency, it has an identity that is clearly distinct from that of the sandwich. There’s no need for a knife, fork or spoon, plate or pair of chopsticks. In fact, it has a simple hand-to-mouth interaction model not unlike that of baby to breast. Fast Food Epiphany The look, feel and taste of McDonald’s food is as branded as its logo. The design of the cheeseburger is a core component of McDonald’s corporate design, just like Ronald McDonald’s and the ketchup and mustard colors of its packaging. Its interface is its brand; its brand is its interface. But so what? Of course, everything at McDonald’s is designed and standardized. Of course, everything is calculated and controlled in a huge global franchise.

My epiphany that night was not that McDonald’s success is based on cold calculation. It was the realization that McDonald’s apparent lack of culinary and aesthetic taste is the result of ‘cold’ user interaction design. McDonald’s design is as user-focused as a high-traffic website. It’s designed so well that it makes us blind like sucklings. Just like Google’s search interface, its beauty is in the interactive experience and not in the object. A Worm Hole between Branding and UX In my experience old school branders and interaction designers fundamentally misunderstood and hated each other. They lived in parallel worlds. In one world the designer controlled everything, in the other the user was in charge. What confused me was that the longer I studied McDonald’s frameset, the less I was able to tell whether I was looking at a brand or at an interface. Is this branding or is it user experience design? I had found what Astronomers call a ‘worm hole.’ A shortcut through space and time that acts like a magic elevator between different realities. McDonald’s seemed to lay at a critical point: the gravitational center of branding, where everything slants into a funnel that leads to a parallel world of user experience design. And back again. Ironically, worm holes have two so called mouths that are connected with a throat:

After discovering that this fascinating indeterminacy between brand and user experience applied to most of the recently successful brands — be it the iPhone, the Wii or Star Bucks — I decided to investigate it by thinking about it and writing about it. Learning from Babies Just by watching my baby grow and interact with its world, I learned more about interfaces than I could have possibly imagined. Most of what babies do is learning to interface with their surrounding. Observing the baby drinking its milk, I noticed that the interfacing does not happen on the nipple. It happens more generally between the mother and the child. In other words: The nipple is not an interface; it’s just one touch point. The interface is in the whole experience a child makes during breast feeding. The interface is the way they connect. And this experience defines the brand “Mama” in the beginning. By studying breast feeding (the blueprint of user interaction) live, I was more and more certain that the correct equation was Brand = User Experience. Translated back into theory: The Interface was in the equals sign, not on the other side of the equation. The interface is what connects the worlds of Branding and User Experience Design. It’s the tunnel. The elevator. The wormhole. The throat. Make sure you don’t miss the second part of the series on Brand = UX. In the next part we’ll look at the tricky question “What is an Interface? And can it be intuitive?” Would you like to see the next parts of this series on SM? Hopefully you’ll find this new format inspirational and interesting. What do you think? Please let us know and comment on this article! Your feedback is very valuable for us and it helps us to meet your expectations. Thank you.

Would you like to read next parts of the series Brand = UX?(opinion)

About the author Oliver Reichenstein is the founder and CEO of iA, a user experience design agency with offices in Tokyo and Zurich.

© Oliver Reichenstein for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 111 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: branding, user interface

Whether you are getting a client to sign off on a website’s design or persuade a user to complete a call to action, we all need to know how to be convincing. Like many in the Web design industry, I have a strange job. I am part salesperson, part consultant and part user experience designer. One day I could be pitching a new idea to a board of directors, the next I might be designing an e-commerce purchasing process. There is, however, a common theme: I spend most of my time persuading people.

As Web designers, we often have to nudge people in the direction we want them to go. It is a vital skill we all have to learn. We’re not talking about manipulation. Underhanded techniques, and certainly lying, won’t get you anywhere. But you can present yourself and your arguments in ways that make people more receptive. The first and probably most important way is to empathize. 1. Empathize The worst thing you can do is enter a meeting or begin designing a user interface with a personal agenda. If your goal is to push the other party into agreeing with you, it will resist. But if you seek to understand their needs and respond to them, you will find the others more cooperative. Start by ListeningTo achieve this, you must really listen. Paying lip service to the “idea” of listening is not enough. You have to hear what they’re saying and look for those “points of pain” that your ideas might actually relieve. Tailor Presentation of AgendaRather than forcing the people in the room to reluctantly agree, tailor your presentation of ideas so that they see the benefit of them. This involves some creative thinking on your part but is possible if you really understand their needs. Show Benefit to Other PartyRemember, explaining how your ideas will help you or others is not enough. You have to demonstrate how they help the actual people you are speaking to. For example, rather than saying to your client, “Users are going to love this new feature,” you could instead say, “This new feature will keep users coming back, which will dramatically improve the number of leads you receive.” Once you understand the other party and have thought about their needs, your next step is to form a relationship with them. 2. Be Personable If you have a good relationship with your users, boss or client, they will be more inclined to take your suggestions. Of course, the kind of relationship you build depends on who the other person is. Your relationship with website users is different from your relationship with your boss. However, certain approaches hold true across the board. Get Them NoddingIt’s a silly little thing, but when I give a pitch, I try to get people to nod. Nodding is a good sign and puts them in a positive mood. I normally achieve this by repeating back to them (in different words) one of their own points. They will obviously agree with what you’re saying, but it also demonstrates that you’re listening and are on the same wave length. The same approach can be used online. For example if I am writing a post aimed at Web designers, I know that berating IE6 will get them nodding in agreement right away. I have succeeded in making a connection.

Be EnthusiasticEnthusiasm is so important. Clients want to know you care about their project. Bosses want to know you are motivated to work, and users want to know you care about the service you deliver. However, so many people lack enthusiasm when communicating their message. They come across either as defeated before they even begin or as overly aggressive. Instead, try overwhelming enthusiasm. It is infectious, and people get caught up in it. More importantly, saying “No” to somebody who is oozing enthusiasm and excitement from ever pore is not easy. It would be like kicking a puppy. (Well, not quite.) Mirror ThemYou have probably heard how mirroring a person’s body language helps establish a positive connection. Whatever you do, do not do it! Consciously doing it just comes across as creepy! It will happen naturally, so don’t worry about it. That said, it is a useful indication of whether a face-to-face meeting is going well. If the other person is mirroring your body language, chances are they like you. What you can consciously do is mirror their language or use the same terminology. If your boss or client talks about “return on investment” or “success criteria,” do it yourself. And if you suspect the other party is not familiar with certain terminology, make sure to avoid it. Our way of speaking associates us with a certain “tribe.” If we share the same language, we are more likely to build a rapport. Make Them SmileAnother trick for building relationships is to inject humour into the proceedings. If you can make the other person smile, you’ve gone a long way to breaking down any barriers. Of course, this has to be done with care. Overdo it and you’ll look like the fool. But even the most miserable-looking directors on a board are human beings, too, and like to smile. Although all of these approaches are great for building relationship, one trumps them all: openness. 3. Be Open You may be reading this thinking, “This guy is mad. What if his clients read this stuff. Won’t they feel manipulated?” My answer is no. I am open and honest about what I do. I would be entirely fine with any one of my clients reading this because nothing manipulative or secret is here. People hate being deceived; so if anything, the honesty in this article will build my relationship, not undermine it. Two key components help build open relationships and create a receptive audience. Disarming HonestyMany times, the best way to diffuse a potential conflict is with disarming honesty. For example, I regularly acknowledge in sales situations that I am there to sell and that they should take anything I say with a pinch of salt. The client obviously knows this already. But verbalizing it shows a kind of honesty that people rarely encounter.

Be Willing to Show WeaknessWe can sometimes be so desperate to make a point that we become unwilling to admit even the slightest weakness in our argument. Ultimately, though, we come across as pig-headed and inflexible. People respond well when you admit you are wrong or are unsure of an answer. Be willing to say “I don’t know” or “I’ve messed up” if necessary. People will respect you for it. One of the best examples of this is Flickr’s blog post “Sometimes We Suck,” in which Flickr apologizes for performance problems. By taking this approach, it demonstrated its integrity and completely defused the anger of those who were complaining. Of course, being willing to show weakness takes a lot of confidence, and that trait is critical if you are to convince others. 4. Be Confident As humans we are drawn to confident leaders. We follow those who have a clear vision and walk the path with confidence. Communicating your message with confidence, therefore, is important. Establish yourself as an expert, and speak with authority. Bet Confident, Not ArrogantBeing confident also means having the strength to admit when you are wrong. A truly confident leader does not claim to have all of the answers all of the time. Being able to concede points and allow others to express their views is a key aspect of confidence. Only those who lack confidence fear opposing views. You Do Not Always Have To WinPick your battles. Conceding some points to achieve the greater aim is okay. Giving ground does not undermine your position. Sometimes you have to be a little submissive to get people on board. Don’t allow your ego to get in the way. If someone feels good about having won an argument, then they will more likely be accommodating when you suggest an alternative. Compromising sometimes is okay. It is certainly better than constantly being negative and rejecting counter-proposals.

1. Be Positive Whether dealing with a demanding boss, difficult client or finicky users, you have to impress them with your attitude and service. Always be helpful and keen to leave a positive impression. In customer service, that sometimes involves going the extra mile. With your boss, it means seeing the benefits of their latest mad scheme. Whatever the situation, developing a reputation for being unhelpful and negative is the worst thing that can happen. Conclusion There are no Jedi mind tricks that will help you to always convince your clients that you are right. At the end of the day, the secret to persuading others is to show respect, listen to their opinions and present your vision in language that they understand. (al)

© Paul Boag for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 42 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: clients, communication, freelancing

Last week I beat you up about why the number one way to increase revenue is by getting feedback from lost sales. Feedback from the field, not adding new features, not polishing the website, not even talking to existing customers. That's right, talking to existing customers isn't good enough! They bought in spite of your faults; you need to talk to the other 99.9% of your potential customers who aren't so forgiving and understanding. But how?

(Cartoon by Andertoons) It's unfair of me to say "find out what's stopping sales" and then not tell you how to go about it. So here are eleven ways to collect empirical data about why people are checking out your product but not buying it, most of which can be implemented in less than a day. 1. Add a short, optional form before your download/eBook/whitepaper so you can follow up. "But forms are a barrier to downloads," I hear you cry. I know this argument, but if you don't have feedback you can't fix your product, and if a hundred people download in silence and don't buy, it doesn't matter that they downloaded. Besides, if you do it right, adding the form doesn't necessarily mean fewer downloads. I didn't used to believe that sentance I just wrote until we did it at Smart Bear. Sure enough, no impact in the number of downloads. None. So how do you "do it right?" I wrote a nice, long article with specific tips, learned by experimenting in the field, that you can put to use in less than a day. Read it here on the Avangate blog. Getting email addresses means you can follow up about the trial. Half of them will have forgotten to start the trial. Half will have gotten stuck and silently stopped. Half don't realize you're a friendly, happy, small company that wants to spend time making them successful. For those who end up not buying, if you ask them "why" you'll be surprised how many will tell you. How can you afford not to know this information? 2. Have an opt-in newsletter. You don't have a newsletter and you don't have time to write one. You don't even know what to put in one. I know, and I don't care! Prompt them anyway, because someday you'll want one, and then you'll have a bunch of email addresses. There's no reason not to build an honest, opt-in, no-spam list of people who are interested in your product. My experience is that most people on such lists aren't paying customers! So this means you get all sorts of excuses to gently ping interested people who haven't given you money. Such as:

Praise the features in a new software release. Give a tip about a feature they might not know about. Tell a customer success story. Highlight a nice article someone wrote about you or which argues that a service like yours is valuable. Announce a partnership with another vendor they might use. Give them a time-limited coupon. Tell them you'll be in their city and ask if they'd like you swing by and do a demo.

If you don't accumulate these emails, it's a tremendous waste, for nothing. Add the checkbox. 3. Offer free stuff for feedback from lost sales. Hunt down the contact info for people who trialed but didn't buy and give them something for free if they'll talk to you for 15 minutes about why they didn't buy. (Guess this means you'll have to get their email address, huh?) At Smart Bear we gave $2010 to Wikipedia, $5 at a time.  It was amazingly successful.

What can you give away?

Cool stuff that promotes something good for the world (e.g. something from Etsy) Give money to charity so you can write it off and the other person feels good (e.g. $25 donation to Kiva or Wikimedia Foundation or Free Software Foundation) $25 coupon to Amazon (it's easy and "Amazon" means "anything you want") Swag with funny/cool content promoting your company (T-shirt, mug, mousepad) Cool stuff having nothing to do with your company but which is desirable to your audience (e.g. calendar of XKCD cartoons or Despair posters)

It's worth $25 at least; probably $50. You don't have to offer it forever, just until you start hearing the same things over and over again. Or budget $1000 and run the offer until the budget is gone. 4. Hunt down the contact info for one customer and get them on the phone. I know, it's an "existing customer," and I just told you they can't tell you why other people aren't buy. But I want you to ask about their buying experience. Well, of course you should also talk about what's bothering them and what they'd like to see next, and in fact that's the excuse you can use for the call. But carve out at least 15 minutes to interview them about the trial and buying process. Ask them things like:

How did they hear about you? (Tells you which marketing sources are worth spending more time/money with)

What information on your website convinced them to download? (Tells you which messages are important; if they're buried, make it more obvious; incorporate into ads)

What was the main reason they bought the software? (Tells you their primary pain point, the one you should address on your home page and ads)

What part of the trial process was confusing or difficult? (Tells you where other people are probably dropping out of the sales process)

1. In your product uninstaller, ask why they didn't buy. This sounds dubious I know. Why would anyone bother? They're already uninstalling, why would they give you the time of day? But the fact is, this works. People like to give opinions. Don't take my word for it — check out this comment on last week's post where Mo Flanagan from WindowTabs volunteered that this technique was "eye-opening" for his company. The FireFox browser not only asks when you uninstall, it even asks if you merely cancel an install!

Sure, most of the time you'll get nothing and sometimes you'll get useless crap like "You suck," but sometimes you'll get gold. As with the Help Menu link, don't bother making a custom form to get the feedback, just pop up an email client or web browser with a form asking why they didn't buy. While you're at it, why not add a field that says: "If you'd like to be notified when we address the problems you've raised, put your email address here." 6. Solicit testimonials from existing customers. Besides being great marketing fodder, testimonials are where you discover the real reasons your customers love you. The real pain you solve, the true impact of your software on their daily life, whether you really do have "legendary" service, etc.. For the things they highlight, consider: Are those things obvious from the get-go to new visitors to your website? Are these things obvious while someone is trialing your product? For the things you thought were great about your product or company that they don't talk about, maybe you should reconsider whether those things are actually important. Listen to your customers' point of view, not yours. Listen to their stories, not your vision. Here's an example. This is an actual customer quote for Smart Bear's (my) software development tool: "When we introduced Code Collaborator, it was like someone broke the ice in our group. With some common ground to start conversations and help us get to know each other, we came out of our cubes and actually talked to each other. As a result, now we collaborate more often to design and test features as well as review them." —Anand Kalyanavarathan, Program Manager, Siemens Notice how there's no mention of features or why we're better than the competition or whether we're SaaS or not. It's a story about how this tool changed the social dynamic in the company from isolation to collaboration. You can see this sentiment reflected in the bi-line on Code Collaborator's product page: "When code review is easy and fun, it actually gets done." 7. Add links (for web apps) and Help Menu items (for desktop apps) soliciting feedback.  Or ask on "quit." It should say something inviting and human like "Complain" or "Yell at us." Just "Feedback" is too corporate and unfeeling. Prove that you want them to click that link! You don't have to create complex forms or mess with proxy servers, just open a "Contact Us" form on your website or launch their email client. We did this at Smart Bear and a sizable percentage of all feedback email comes from that link in the product. You can probably add this to your software in an hour. Why not do it? Keith from Redcort software suggests also prompting users when they exit the product.  Would that bother a user?  During a trial, this is no different from any other "annoyance" buy-me-now box, but has much great opportunity for reward. 8. Give away free copies of your software in exchange for product reviews. Reviews not only give you feedback about your software, they also double as publicity. Don't worry about getting bad publicity. If your product is DOA they won't bother writing a review, because writing "I couldn't get it installed" doesn't make for an interesting article. If they like some parts and dislike others, that's OK. In fact, there's data that shows people are more likely to try a product that has mixed reviews that one with rave reviews, provided the reviewer gives details! The smaller the blogger the more likely they are to help you. Remember, even a blogger with 17 RSS subscribers can provide valuable feedback. 9. Give away copies of your software in exchange for a 30-minute feedback session. After the trial period elapses, almost no one buys, right? So you send some emails to beg them etc., but almost no one responds, right? So you have these people who were interested enough to download but absolutely are not going to buy. I propose you give them the software for free. You're not losing money on the sale because they weren't going to buy anyway. You exchange the free license only if they get on the phone with you and really talk about why they couldn't shake the money loose from the boss. The only way you "lose money" here is that you have to provide tech support without revenue. But the feedback about lost sales is more than worth it. Besides, those people will tell their friends (free publicity), and you can set limits like "only one free seat per company" so that they can't pull this trick on you twice. Also you don't have to offer this forever. By the time they tell their friends and suggest that if they wait they could get a free seat, you'll have ended this program because you'll have gotten 10 meetings and you'll know how to get those friends to actually purchase. 10. Find a local startup/entrepreneur/user group in town and pitch your product. Most cities have an informal support group for startups. Ask whether you can pitch your product to the group for practice and feedback. It doesn't matter if you're pitching in front of entrepreneurs, investors, or a local user group. In fact, the latter is great if they're also your potential customers — you get to do a sales pitch in a friendly environment. Even if you don't get great feedback, having to do a presentation forces you to rethink what's important and interesting about your software and how to communicate that to others. Frequently this exercise reshuffles some ideas that end up on your home page and advertisements. 11. Use UserVoice or GetSatisfacion These web-based services solicit feedback and then allow people to vote on each other's ideas. The cost is free or cheap depending on service options. Both of these services are ubiquitous on the web so people generally know how to use them. I recommend allowing anonymous responses, otherwise many people will be discouraged by having to create a new account or forgetting the account information they created. Don't worry about people crapping up your forums. You won't have much feedback at first so moderation is easy, and in my experience at Smart Bear we've had hundreds of entries and comments and thousands of votes, and we haven't once needed to delete something. Please, just do something If you're not actively getting data about lost sales every day, you're in the dark. These techniques are easy to implement so there's no excuse not to try some. If you still think you "already know what they're going to say," try it anyway. If you're right, good for you. But if you're wrong, these techniques could be the difference between molding a product people will actually pay money for and going out of business with an idea you thought was perfect. What other techniques do you have? Leave a comment!

What if you had a nickle for every time you heard: "I have the perfect idea for a great application!"? It’s the buzz on the street. The iPhone has created unprecedented excitement and innovation from people both inside and outside the software development community. Still for those outside the development world, the process is a bit of a mystery. This how-to guide is supposed to walk you through the steps to make your idea for an iPhone app a reality. This post presents various ideas, techniques, tips, and resources that may come in handy if you are planning on creating your first iPhone application.

We also discuss UI design and marketing techniques in our upcoming Smashing Book ($23.90 $29.90, available worldwide). Pre-order now and save 20% off the price!

1. Have an idea – a Good Idea How do you know if your idea is a good one? The first step is to even care if your idea is solid; and the second step is to answer the question does it have at least one of the indicators of success?  

Does your app solve a unique problem? Before the light bulb was invented, somebody had to shout out “Man, reading by candlelight sucks!” Figure out what sucks, and how your app can make the life of its user more comfortable.

Does the app serve a specific niche? Though there aren’t any stats on the App Store search, the usage of applications is certainly growing with the explosion of App Store inventory. Find a niche with ardent fans (pet lovers, for example) and create an app that caters to a specific audience.

Does it make people laugh? This is a no-brainer. If you can come up with something funny, you are definitely on the right track and your idea may be the golden one. Heck, I hit a red “do not press” button for 5 minutes yesterday.

Are you building a better wheel? Are there existing successful apps that lack significant feature enhancements? Don’t be satisfied with just a wine list, give sommeliers a way to talk to their fans!

Will the app be highly interactive? Let’s face it, most of us have the attention span of a flea. Successful games and utilities engage the user by requiring action!

Action: Does your app fall in to one of these categories? If yes, it’s just about time to prepare the necessary tools. 2. Tools Checklist Below is a list of items you’ll need (*starred items are required, the rest are nice-to-have’s):

join the Apple iPhone Developer Program ($99) * get iPhone or iPod Touch * get an Intel-based Mac computer with Mac OS X 10.5.5, prepare a Non-Disclosure Agreement (here’s a sample) * download and install the latest version of the iPhone SDK if you don’t already have it. a spiral bound notebook*

Action: Load up on your required supplies. 3. What Are You Really Good At? What skills do you bring to the table? Are you a designer whose brain objects to Objective C? A developer who can’t design their way out of a paper sack? Or maybe you are neither, but an individual with an idea you’d like to take to the market? Designing a successful iPhone application is a lot like starting a small business. You play the role of Researcher, Project Manager, Accountant, Information Architect, Designer, Developer, Marketer and Advertiser – all rolled into one. Remember what all good entrepreneurs know – it takes a team to make a product successful. Don’t get me wrong, you certainly can do it all. But you can also waste a lot of time, energy and sanity in the process. Don’t go crazy, reference the checklist below and ask yourself: What roles are the best fit for you to lead? Then find other talented people to fill in the gaps. The infusion of additional ideas can only enrich the product! Skills Checklist

Ability to Discern what works/doesn’t work in existing iPhone Apps Market research Outlining App Functionality (Sitemap Creation) Sketching GUI Design Programming (Objective C, Cocoa) (we assume here that we are creating a native application) App Promotion and Marketing

Remember to have contractors sign your non-disclosure agreement. Having a contract in place tells your contractor "I’m a professional that takes my business and this project seriously. Now don’t go runnin’ off with this idea." Action: Select skills that are a good fit for you to lead. For those roles where you cannot lead, hire professionals. 4. Do Your Homework: Market Research Market research is a fancy way of saying "Look at what other people are doing and don’t make the same mistakes." Learn from the good, bad and ugly in the App Store. Coming up with creative solutions in the app concept development and design starts with analyzing other (maybe similar) applications. Even if you encounter a lot of poorly designed apps, your mind will reference these examples of what not to do.

Action: Answer these questions:

What problem does your app solve? What products have you seen that perform a similar task? How do successful apps present information to users? How can you build on what works and make it unique? What value does your app bring to your audience?

1. Know the iPhone/iPod Touch UI If you want to create an iPhone app, you need to understand the capabilities of the iPhone and its interface. Can you shoot a .45 caliber bullet out of your iPhone? No. Can you shoot videos? Yes! The good news is that you don’t have to memorize the encyclopedic Apple User Interface Guidelines to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t in iPhone Apps. Download and play with as many apps as you can, and think about what functionality you want to include in your product. Take note of:

How do well-designed apps navigate from screen to screen? How do they organize information? How MUCH information do they present to the user? How do they take advantage of the iPhone’s unique characteristics: the accelerometer, swiping features, pinch, expand and rotate functions?

Action: Download the Top 10 apps in every category and play with all of them. Review the Apple Guidelines for UI design and list at least 5 features you’d like to incorporate into your app. 6. Determine "Who will use your app?" We assume here that you’ve already determined that your app will bring value and that you will have a raging audience for your app. Well, fine, they are raging fans, but who are they really? What actions will they take to achieve their goals within the app? If it’s a game, maybe they want to beat their high score. Or perhaps they are a first time player – how will their experience differ from someone who is getting a nice case of brain-rot playing your game all day? If it’s a utility app, and your audience wants to find a coffee shop quickly, what actions will they take within the app to find that coffee shop? Where are they when they’re looking for coffee? Usually in the car! Do present an interface that requires multiple taps, reading and referencing a lot? Probably not! This is how thinking about how real-life intersects design. Action: Line item out the different types of people who will use your app. You can even name them if you want to make the scenarios you draw out as real as possible. 7. Sketch Out Your Idea And by "sketch" I mean literally sketch. Line out a 9-rectangle grid on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and get to sketching! Ask yourself:

What information does each screen need to present? How can we take the user from point A to point B to point C? How should elements on the screen be proportioned or sized in relation to each other (i.e. is this thing even tap-able?)

Image credit: Cultured Code Thumbnailing your ideas on paper can push your creativity far beyond where your imagination might stagnate working in an sketching application! You can also buy the iPhone Stencil Kit to quickly sketch out iPhone UI prototypes on paper. Action: Create at least one thumbnail page of your application per screen. Experiment with various navigational schemes, the text you put on buttons, and how screens connect. If you want to transfer your sketches into digital format, iPlotz is a good tool to check out. 8. Time for Design

If you are a designer, download the iPhone GUI Photoshop template or our iPhone PSD Vector Kit. Both are collections of iPhone GUI elements that will save you a lot of time in getting started. If you’ve solidified your layout during sketching, drawing up the screens will be less of a layout exercise and more about the actual design of the app. If you are not a designer, hire one! It’s like hiring an electrician to do electrical work. You can go to Home Depot and buy tools to try it yourself, but who wants to risk getting zapped? If you’ve followed steps 1–3, you’ll have everything you need for a designer to get started. When looking for a designer, try to find someone who has experience designing for mobile devices. They may have some good feedback and suggested improvements for your sketches. A few places to look for designers: Coroflot, Crowdspring, eLance. When posting your job offer, be very specific about your requirements, and also be ready to review a lot of portfolios. Action: If you are a designer, get started in Photoshop. If you are not a designer, start interviewing designers for your job. 9. Programming

Even though this how-to is sequential, it’s a good idea to get a developer on board at the same time when you line up design resources. Talking with a developer sooner than later will help you scope out a project that is technically feasible and within your budget. If you are a Objective C/Cocoa developer crack, open Xcode and get started! A few forums to join if you haven’t already:

Apple Dev Forum iPhoneSDK (moderated by Erica Sadun) iPhoneSDKForum iPhoneDev Forums iPhoneSB

If you are not a developer, you know what to do – find one! Specify the type of app you want to produce – whether it is a game, utility or anything else. Each type usually requires a different coding skill set. A few places to look for developers: Odesk, iPhoneFreelancer, eLance and any of the forums listed above. 10. Submit your application to Apple Store OK, so how do you submit your application to Apple Store now? The process of compiling your application and publishing the binary for iTunes Connect can be difficult for anyone unfamiliar with XCode. If you are working with a developer, ask them to help you:

Create your Certificates Define your App ID’s Create your Distribution Provisioning Profile Compile the application Upload to iTunes Connect

Action: If you are a developer, map out a development timeline and get started. If you are not a developer, start interviewing devs for your job. 11. Promote Your App If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and nobody was around to hear it does it make a sound? Apps can sit in the store unnoticed very easily. Don’t let this happen to you. Be ready with a plan to market your app. In fact, be ready with many plans to market your app. Be ready to experiment, some ideas will work, others won’t. Strategies for maintaining/boosting app sales:

Incorporating social media. If your users make the high score on his or her favorite game, it is a good idea to make it easy for the user to post it to Facebook or Twitter. Think about how your app can incorporate social media and build that functionality into your app. At a minimum, set up a fan page for your app on Facebook and Twitter and use them as platforms to communicate with your users and get feedback on your app. Pre-launch promotion. Start building buzz about your app before it has launched. E-mail people who write about things that relate to your app and see if they will talk up the upcoming release of your app. Plan for multiple releases. Don’t pack your app with every single feature you want to offer in the very first release. Make your dream list for the app and make sure that the app is designed to incorporate all of the features at some time in the future. Then periodically drop new versions of the app to boost app store sales.

Action: Make a list of 20 promotional strategies that target the audience for your app. Take action on them yourself or hire someone who can! 11. Stay Focused and Don’t Give Up! It’s easy when you are working on your first app to get all AppHappy, dreaming up a zillion new app-ideas. Dream, but don’t get sidetracked by new ideas. Your first app needs to make a big splash and getting involved in too many projects at once can dilute your passion for making your first application a success. Action: Get out there and go kick some app! About the Author Jen Gordon is the owner of Atlanta-based iPhone app design studio Clever Twist. She specializes in usable interfaces, beautiful design and straight talk. She loves her family, the iPhone and periodically dreams that she’s close friends with Dolly Parton. Follow her on Twitter or drop her a line to say hi!

We also discuss UI design and marketing techniques in our upcoming Smashing Book ($23.90 $29.90, available worldwide). Pre-order now and save 20% off the price!

© Jen Gordon for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 87 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: development, iphone

Last week we presented 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert – we discussed various rules and guidelines from marketing, such as subliminal suggestion, prevention of choice paralysis, AIDA-principle, attention guide and the Gutenberg rule. The main idea was to help designers and developers create a design that would help the site to grow and become a success the financial point of view. As we see more and more businesses move their services online, and even more that begin their life on the Web, a greater need arises for websites that are designed and built to sell. A great-looking website may achieve the goal of shaping and delivering a strong brand, but its good looks alone aren’t enough to sell the products or services on offer. For that, you need to introduce the element of marketing. This article presents further principles and rules that will help your site convert. Among other things, we cover A/B testing, footnotes, testimonials, feature lists, the sign-up process and typography. You may be interesting in the following related posts:

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design 5 More Principles Of Effective Design 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques

1. A/B Testing There is no reason to stop developing your website once you’ve come up with a design that you’re happy with and that you think best sells your product. Practice often differs from theory, and every market is different. Things you believe should work may not actually perform well in your context. This doesn’t mean your implementation was completely wrong; perhaps it just needs a little tweaking to achieve its full potential. You can tweak your website using what’s called A/B testing (also known as split testing). Basically, this test pits design A against design B and determines which performs better. This simple test helps you figure out things like, Which headline works better, or Where should you place the “Buy now” button? Google Website Optimizer Google Website Optimizer is a free tool you can use to perform A/B testing, as well as multivariate testing (testing many combinations of variables), on your website. It’s relatively simple to use: all you need to do is provide Google Website Optimizer with the different assets you want to test, and it will randomly load them for your visitors and track which ones lead to better conversions.
2. Footnotes: The Good and the Bad Ones Sometimes, when writing a description of your service or a product feature, you may need to disclose additional information about things like availability and price. This extra information can usually be placed in a footnote at the bottom of the page. This is logical because you want to keep the copy on your main page as slim as possible to ensure people actually read it. If the copy has any extra information that is not relevant to the pitch, then it may break the flow and add needless weight. To add a footnote, just insert a reference number in the main text (using the sup-tag), and then place the accompanying explanation at the bottom of the page (the larger the font size, the better). A typical feature description on Apple’s website. The little asterisk in the first line under the heading “Built for Time Machine” indicates that a technical description is in the footnote. However, some companies use footnotes for another purpose: instead of hiding superflous technical details, they trick customers into buying something, offering services “for free” and referring with footnotes or asterisks to details of the deal. These details are almost always unreadable – because of the font size and the font color – and almost always result in misunderstandings and problems. If you or your company use footnotes for this purpose, you are definitely doing something wrong. Once your users lost trust for your company (for instance, because they purchased something that they didn’t want to buy), it will be damn hard for you to win it back. The German company T-Mobile offers the iPhone for a sensational price: 1 Euro. Of course, the customer needs to pay attention to little footnotes that explain further costs. This is hidden marketing and disrespectful behavior towards customers. Price details in the footnotes: unreadable blocks of unscannable chunks of text with numerous numbers and traps for customers. That’s not how footnotes should be used. Conclusion: if you care about your customers and aim to build a solid, long-term relationship with them, you better make sure you communicate with them honestly and directly – and use footnotes properly.
3. Testimonials Testimonials are great because they tell your visitors that other people use your product and would go as far as recommend it. Testimonials help relieve some of the risk associated with purchasing a new product or service. You have little way of telling whether something is good or not until you try it, and knowing that others have tried it and liked it helps a lot in breaking down this risk barrier. There are some formatting tricks you can use to make your testimonials more effective. For example, read the following three testimonials:

I found Product X to be incredibly useful in my daily workflow. “I found Product X to be incredibly useful in my daily workflow.” “I found Product X to be incredibly useful in my daily workflow.” John Smith, ACME Corp, New York

The first testimonial doesn’t have anything attached to it — it’s just a sentence and so doesn’t look very believable. The third one on the other hand has speech marks around it and attribution to the source. Just adding speech marks already makes a testimonial look better. For best testimonials though make sure to add a source. Business Catalyst formats their testimonials perfectly, with a picture of each client next to their quote. Quotes from publications on The Resumator site follow the same rules. It’s also a good idea to provide readers with case-studies that describe the process of your work and explain how customers liked it, what were the problems and how the service can be useful to solve tasks from the daily routine. 4. Scannable Feature Lists Your visitors don’t have a lot of patience. Why? They’re spending their time browsing your website, time that could be spent doing a myriad of other things. Time is money, and people are investing it when they navigate around your website. This means you’ve got to offer something valuable in return. You must grab their attention and not let go. If they get bored or don’t like what you offer, then they will click away and likely be gone forever. Rapidweaver makes its feature list scannable by using white space, headings and images. To address this, present your information in a way that is easiest and quickest to digest. You’ve got to slice up your marketing pitch into bite-sized chunks that are fast to read and simple to understand. You may want to give each chunk a heading or highlight areas of the text to stand out. You can also add images, such as an icon next to each chunk of text. All of this makes the text scannable. People are then able to look over the text, pick out headings and read more detailed blurbs about the elements they like. …and so does MyFonts. 5. Streamline The Sign-Up Process Selling has a lot to do with breaking down barriers. These barriers are mainly the objections people imagine to buying your product, but these barriers can also be physical; for example, the sign-up form on your website. Users have to fill in forms, and that means a little work on their part. To ensure you don’t lose conversions at this stage, you can do a few things. First of all, ensure the sign-up form is as short as possible. If a field is optional, it doesn’t have to be there. Users can always fill in optional fields later on their settings page. Don’t make potential customers do more work than they have to; keep the form nice and short and easy to fill in. Posterous, a blog host, doesn’t even ask you to sign up to start using it: just email your first post to its address. Secondly, to ensure users don’t make any mistakes and have to re-fill information, you can validate fields live using AJAX. You could, for example, display a green tick next to each filled-in field when it validates, or display a red cross along with a short error message if some error occurs (such as if a required field is left empty or a user name that is already taken is chosen). This allows people to see any errors as they’re filling in the form and fix them before clicking the “Submit” button. The Veritocracy sign-up form isn’t even a separate page; it’s a form that pops up as a modal window and requires only four fields to be filled in. Lastly, you can simplify the page layout of the sign-up form by removing any irrelevant navigation elements. Your objective here is to get the visitor to sign up rather than navigate to other sections of the website, so you can remove any extra navigation to help the user focus on the task at hand. 6. White Space Is Not Lost Space Have you ever seen those cheap ad booklets one gets in the post, all full of bright colors, big text and pictures, every millimeter used to display a latest offer or new deal. The designers try to fit everything they’ve got into the booklet and make sure no space is wasted. Cramming everything you’ve got into a limited amount of space isn’t always the best approach, though, and in most cases it’s the wrong approach online. Perfect use of spacing and white space in a magazine-layout on Good.is. The space makes the content look clean, attractive and readable. White space, the empty space around and between various pieces of content, is important. It gives your design air to breathe by separating elements. This separation is valuable because it allows people to focus their attention on individual areas of the page, be it the navigation, a feature description or the website’s description. When everything is stuck together, it becomes more difficult to distinguish between its components and thus more difficult to focus on and thus less scannable. You can read more about the proper use of spacing in Liam McKay’s excellent article How to Spot Quality within Web Design: Examples & Tips. 7. Set your type properly The way you set your type has an effect on how well your copy performs. Good typography can give your copy the punch it needs. Use large font sizes to make headings stand out. If you’re selling to an older demographic, ensure all font sizes are large enough to read easily. Small fonts may look great, but if they’re difficult to read, they will turn people off. Also, ensure the text and its background color have enough contrast. Black on white is a good start. Inverted color schemes (light text on dark background) do not work so well in most cases, especially if your audience is used to more traditional media (e.g. newspapers), where black on white is the standard. The redesigned 37signals website features eye-catching typography that takes advantage of big font sizes, varying colors and high contrast. To focus people’s attention on certain elements, you can decrease the contrast of surrounding elements by using something like dark gray on white (instead of black on white) to fade them out a little. Use stronger contrast for the stuff you want people to notice. One good technique is to use the highest contrast for a feature heading or brief description, and then a lower contrast for the detailed blurb below. The aim here is to make the page scannable: let people glance over it and settle their gaze on the text that’s most important and quickest to digest. To Conclude Design definitely has a role to play in selling the product or service on your website, though it’s more of a support than a lead role. Design should reinforce the copy: help it stand out and be readable. Choose images that send the message you want. Ask yourself what purpose each image on your website has. If it has no purpose, why is it there? Use white space and typography to give your copy punch. At the end of the day, though, you have to make sure your content actually works, because a great design alone won’t be enough to close the sale. About the Author Dmitry Fadeyev is the founder of the Usability Post blog, where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability. (al)

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 44 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: convert, guidelines, marketing, principles

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world. This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release. Favicon A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your website. Some browsers pick up the favicon if you save it in your root directory as favicon.ico, but to be sure it’s picked up all the time, include the following in your head. <link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" /> And if you have an iPhone favicon: <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/favicon.png" />

Titles And Meta Data Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content. <title>10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS | How-To | Smashing Magazine</title> Meta description and keyword tags aren’t as important for SEO (at least for the major search engines anyway), but it’s still a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description. <meta name="description" content="By Paul Boag Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look" />

Cross-Browser Checks Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

Cross-Browser Checks: Services and Test Suites 7 fresh and simple ways to test cross-browser compatibility

Proofread Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

Writing for the web

Links Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention. Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. Don’t underline text that isn’t a link because it will confuse users. And what happens to visited links?

W3C Link Checker

Functionality Check Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use your website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

Silverback - guerrilla usability testing

Graceful Degradation Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox. Test your forms to make sure they still perform server-side validation checks, and test any cool AJAX stuff you have going on.

Validation You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors. Common gotchas include no “alt” tags, no closing tags and using “&” instead of “&amp;” for ampersands.

10 reasons your code won’t validate (and how to fix it) W3C validator

RSS Link If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar. Put this code between your <head> tags. <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Site or RSS title" href="link-to-feed" />

Analytics Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1. Google Analytics is a free favorite among website owners. Others to consider are Clicky, Kissmetrics (still in closed beta yet), Mint and StatCounter.

Sitemap Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you. After creating the file, upload it to your root directory so that its location is http://www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml. If you use WordPress, install the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, which automatically updates the sitemap when you write new posts. Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

Defensive Design The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist. Get your users back on track by providing a useful 404 page that directs them to the home page or suggests other pages they may be interested in. Another defensive design technique is checking your forms for validation. Try submitting unusual information in your form fields (e.g. lots of characters, letters in number fields, etc.) and make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it.

404 error pages reloaded

Optimize You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too. Reducing HTTP requests, using CSS sprites wherever possible, optimizing images for the Web, compressing JavaScript and CSS files and so on can all help load your pages more quickly and use less server resources. Besides, depending on the publishing engine that you are using, you may need to consider taking more specific measures – for instance, if you are using WordPress, you may need to consider useful caching techniques to speed up the performance.

Best practices for speeding up your website Web page analyzer

Back Up If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install Wordpress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet. Also, certain CSS elements, such as floats, don’t come out well when printed. To point to a special CSS style sheet that computers automatically use when users print a page, simply include the following code between your <head> tags. <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="print.css" media="print" />

Printing The Web: Solutions and Techniques A List Apart: Going to print

Download the Ultimate Website Launch Checklist! Just recently Dan Zambonini has published a very detailed checklist that covers both the pre-launch and the post-launch phase of the web site life cycle. Among other things his Ultimate Website Launch Checklist contains checks related to content and style, standards and validation, search engine visibility, functional testing, security/risk, performance and marketing.

The pdf-version is available as well. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released. You may also want to consider the Quick Usability Check List by David Leggett that highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts. Not all of these items will apply to every website, these are just suggested things to look for in your own site design.

What other checks would you list? Make yourself a to-do list and keep it handy to check over before making any website live. Are there any other points you would add? Share them in the comments! About the author Lee Munroe is a freelance Web designer from Belfast. You can see his other writings on Web design on his blog, or follow him on Twitter. (al)

© Lee Munroe for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 181 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: checks, design, launching, release, usability

As we see more and more businesses move their services online, and even more that begin their life on the Web, a greater need arises for websites that are designed and built to sell. A great-looking website may achieve the goal of shaping and delivering a strong brand, but its good looks alone aren’t enough to sell the products or services on offer. For that, you need to introduce the element of marketing. You may want to take a look at the following related articles:

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design 5 More Principles Of Effective Design 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques

1. Subliminal Suggestion Research shows that objects and images you see around you can prime you for certain behaviors. For example, a study on children showed that after being shown a Santa Claus cap, they were more likely to share candy with others. The cap embodied the concept of sharing and giving in their minds, and exposure to it primed them for regarding sharing more positively. The same study also exposed kids to a “Toys ‘R’ Us” logo, which had the opposite effect of the Santa Claus cap, making them less likely to share their candy. LegacyLocker features a photo of a happy family on its landing page, presumably to evoke in visitors a warm feeling for its product and a desire to care for their loved ones. When choosing images for your website, think carefully about the message you’re trying to send. Pick images that are meaningful and that embody that message or feeling. Don’t put graphics on your website for their own sake — if they’re not doing a job, they don’t have to be there. Clichéd and overused imagery and stock photos are also dangerous because it may not send the right message in the given context, so select images that get the effect you’re after.
2. Prevent Choice Paralysis There is a phenomenon in marketing known as “choice paralysis.” Choice paralysis happens when the user is given too many options. Choice is great, but when your customers are presented with too many options, they may be confused about where to go. Nobody wants buyer’s remorse (where a person chooses an item and decides later it’s not right for them), so many people spend more time than they should on the selection process: they become paralyzed. In fact, according to Barry Schwatz, when customers have too many options to consider, they end up avoiding a specific service or the task in general (Paradox of Choice) – and this is exactly what we as designers need to carefully consider in our designs. The Highrise pricing list shows a set of monthly payment plans. The most popular one stands out visually to help you make a choice. To remedy choice paralysis, make it easier for people to find the right product or service for them. Tell them what each option is great for, and then suggest the one they should choose. You can even use visuals to highlight the most popular product and steer potential customers towards it. If the product is not right for them, they’ll pick another, but if they’re confused, a “default” choice helps prevent choice paralysis.
3. Show The Product When you visit a physical store, perhaps a grocery, you can look at, examine and sometimes even taste the products on sale. You make your purchasing decision based on the information you gather there. Are the tomatoes ripe enough? Are those strawberries red enough? What about the look and smell of that freshly baked bread? When you sell services or Web apps online, you should do exactly the same thing: show the product. It’s surprising how many websites that sell software don’t actually show screenshots of their applications. Sure, these are intangible goods, digital goods that you can’t touch or smell, but they’re still goods you can see. Dashboard puts large screenshots of its lead-tracking app right on the front page. People make judgments based on what products look like. Why? Because appearance is an indicator, rightly or wrongly, of a product’s usability. This is known as the aesthetic-usability effect. Xtorrent, a torrent download client for OS X, has a product screenshot right at the top of its minimalist landing page. If people see a complicated and cluttered interface or, in some cases, even just an unattractive interface, they may assume it is not very usable or is hard to learn. On the other hand, if people see an attractive and simple-looking interface, they may start figuring out how it works right then and will want to give it a try. Get people to imagine using your software, and you’ll get closer to closing the sale.
4. Let People Try It Once you start using a product, you become involved in it. Once you start entering data into it, you begin to make it your own. Every second a user spends trying out features is a second of their time invested in learning and using your product. When that user is then presented with the question of whether to purchase or subscribe to the product or service, they will more likely say “yes” because they are already involved and have invested time in it. Of course, if the product is bad, then it may turn people off, but then your priority should really be to improve the product until it reaches a level people are happy with. MailChimp, an email marketing service, allows you to start using the service for free with your first 100 subscribers. In recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of the “freemium” business model. A freemium service allows people to use a portion of it free of charge, but requires a purchase to use all of its features. It gives people a taste of the full product but doesn’t limit them to a trial period. This lets them use the product for free without monetary commitment and then upgrade if they like it. It’s a great model for many online Software-as-a-Service businesses because once somebody begins using your product, they get sucked in. They start to rely on it, and when they rely on it to do business or manage their life, they will very likely need the premium features down the line and will be happy to upgrade because they already know your service well. Stories are very important in sales because they get potential customers to imagine what it would be like to use your product. Letting people actually try your product for free goes even further. They don’t have to imagine because they can begin using it right away at no cost. Letting people try out your product, whether through a demo, a trial period or a freemium model, is an excellent way to win customers. Now, this isn’t really a “design” element but is important to mention here because of its potential to drive conversions.
5. AIDA AIDA is a well-known strategy in sales and stands for: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. It is relatively simple and describes the sequence of events you should aim for to get a sale. So, first of all, you must capture the attention of your potential customer. Once you have it, you should win their interest by explaining how your product or service can help them. Then, once they’re interested, generate a desire in them for your product. For example, a story about how this product has helped someone like your visitor can help them imagine what this product would do for them, and especially what benefits it would bring. Indeed, the benefit part is key here because benefits, not features, sell products. Finally, you need to get people to act. This means purchasing the product or signing up for the service. If people want your product, all they may need is a button to check out. If they are interested but not yet sure, you could use a few methods to motivate them further; for example, creating a sense of urgency with a limited-time offer or limited supply. Yokaboo features large, eye-catching graphics. You’re likely to first read the short description on the left. The stats on the t-shirt then help build trust. Finally, you are presented with a call to action on the right. Now, the AIDA approach applies more to copy — the actual marketing text on the website — than design, so what we need to do on the design side is reinforce that copy, make it stand out and ensure visitors read it. This means making sure the first thing a new visitor sees really grabs their attention. The flow of the page should then direct their focus to the items that achieve the other two goals: interest and desire. Finally, at the end of this flow, we need to convert. So, provide calls to action: “Order now,” “Sign up here.” It’s important to understand that the design alone won’t sell: you need strong copy in place to do most of that work. The design is there to reinforce and support the copy, rather than the other way around. Reinvigorate captures your attention with three large words at the top: “measure. analyze. evolve.” You’re then led to a more descriptive bit of text below and a call to action link. This means you shouldn’t design a nice website first and then fill up the space with words. Instead, think about the message you want to send out, write the copy and then construct a design that delivers that. If a delivery truck breaks down, then the package does not arrive, but if there was no package in the first place, then the delivery wouldn’t matter at all.
6. Guide attention To benefit from something like AIDA, you have to lead your visitors through your content. You can do this by aligning items in a manner that will flow, and using images that guide the eyes. For example, if you want to focus attention somewhere, use a big arrow. Our eyes will notice the arrow and will naturally want to see where it points to. Business Catalyst uses an arrow graphic to lead the visitor’s gaze onto the “Watch the video” button. The content on the Silverback site flows down towards the download button. Additionally, the arrow on that button points towards the purchase link. Structure your content in a way that will flow towards something. Having a bunch of scattered feature descriptions may confuse and make your visitors lost, unless of course if all of the points end in calls to action. If you want to ensure your visitors don’t miss anything, align everything in a linear structure so that the user scans along it. Make sure to end it with the ultimate call to action: that signup or download link.
7. Always Provide Next Actions ABC: Always Be Closing. If you’re designing a website to sell something, whether a software application or Web service, you should always be thinking about how you’re closing the deal on each page. This doesn’t mean filling every page with big “Buy now” buttons; it means when the customer is ready to buy, they shouldn’t have to look around for the check-out link. Notice how each of the three bits of text on the Skype website has a call to action after it, whether it’s a “Learn more” or a purchase link. Always provide next-action links to keep the flow going and to ensure you don’t lose the attention of potential customers. Next-action links can direct the visitor to a page with more information about the product or to the actual page where they can make the purchase or sign up. These links could read something like: “Ready to order? Click here,” “Learn more,” “Take the tour” or “Shop now.” Don’t leave a dead end on any page: always suggest to your visitors where they should go next.
8. The Gutenberg rule The Gutenberg diagram (or the Gutenberg rule) is a concept that maps out something called reading gravity. Reading gravity describes a habit of reading in the western world: left to right, top to bottom. The Gutenberg diagram splits up a page into four quadrants: the “Primary Optical Area” in top left, the “Strong Fallow Area” in top right, the “Weak Fallow Area” in the bottom left and a “Terminal Area” in bottom right. The Gutenberg diagram It suggests that the bottom left area of the page will get least attention as our eyes scan the page from top left to bottom right and that our glance would end up in the lower right portion of the page. How can we utilize this concept? Buttons and calls to action could be placed in bottom right instead of bottom left, as this is the place where the visitor’s glance is likely to alight. Notice how GoodBarry has the trial signup button placed at the bottom right of the above the fold area of the landing page. Note that the Gutenberg diagram is more likely to work on pages which have more a balanced distribution of content. If parts of your page have strong highlights through high contrast and bold typography, then those areas would likely attract more attention and so will direct the way a user scans the page. Related Posts You may want to take a look at the following related articles:

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design 5 More Principles Of Effective Design 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques

About the Author Dmitry Fadeyev is the founder of the Usability Post blog, where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability.

© Dmitry Fadeyev for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 118 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: convert, design, usability

By Steven Snell Communication is one of the foundational elements of a good website. It is essential for a positive user experience and for a successful website that truly benefits its owners. All types of websites are affected by the need for good communication in one way or another. Regardless of whether the website in question is an e-commerce website, a blog, a portfolio website, an information website for a service company, a government website or any other type of website, there is a significant need to communicate effectively with visitors. Because of the significance of communication with visitors, it is an essential consideration for every designer and website owner and the responsibility of both. Unfortunately, communication is sometimes overlooked and takes a backseat to the visual attractiveness of a website. Ideally, the design and other elements that do the communicating work together to create a clear, unified message to visitors. In this article, we’ll take a broad look at the subject of clear communication in Web design. We’ll start with a discussion of the primary methods of communication for websites and typical challenges that designers face. From there, we’ll move on to look at what specifically should be communicated to visitors and tips for implementing this in your own work. At the end, we’ll look at some of the goals that should be established in terms of communication when developing websites, as well as some of the results of having a website that communicates effectively. 1. Methods of Communication Websites communicate with visitors in a number of different ways. Not all websites take the same approach, but almost every website will use at least a few common methods of communication. To get started, let’s first look at some of the basic ways that websites communicate with visitors before going into more depth on the subject. 1.1. Text Text is, of course, the most obvious form of communication that takes place online. Whether the text is in the main body content of the page or a headline, most website visitors rely on text to understand the basic messages of a website. Depending on the type of the website, text may be extremely critical to communication, as in the case of blogs. The approach taken with text will depend on the purpose of the website. For example, sales copy on an e-commerce or membership website will differ from article content on an informational website. 1.2. Images We’ve all heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Photos and images are excellent resources not only for creating an attractive and interesting design, but also for communication purposes. Images can often communicate a message faster, more clearly and more emphatically than text. The designer needs to be aware of the messages being communicated via images and ensure they work in harmony with the rest of the website’s communication.

Photographer Andrew Gransden has a beautiful portfolio website. Most of the screen space above the fold on the home page is taken up by a large photo that rotates randomly on page load. Andrew allows the quality photography to do the majority of the communication, rather than rely primarily on text to attract potential clients. 1.3. Titles and Headers Whether you’re examining Web design, magazine layout, newspaper design, etc., titles and headers are critical to effective communication. Human nature is to want to know something quickly, and especially when on the Web. Titles and headers help to communicate major points and ideas to visitors, and they tell visitors what to expect from the rest of the content. 1.4. Icons One of the reasons icons are so useful in Web design is that they communicate messages without any text being used. A visitor may see a familiar icon, such as a house that represents a link to the home page, and immediately know what the item represents and what to do. 1.5. Design Styles The style of a website’s design may also communicate a message to visitors. Certain design styles are common in particular industries, and other styles may not be an appropriate fit for a specific type of website. The style can, in these cases, indicate to visitors something about your website and how it fits their needs. For example, a website that sells skateboards would likely feature a grunge style design. This is a style that most visitors in the target market would appreciate, and by seeing this type of style, visitors in that target market will likely feel comfortable with the website and feel an association with it. In this case, the design style helps communicate to visitors that this is where they belong and that the website was created for them. 1.6. Colors Obviously, there is an infinite variety of colors and color schemes in Web design. Sometimes colors are chosen just based on what looks good, but other times the psychology of color comes into play. Colors not only play a large role in determining how a website looks, but also communicate messages to visitors in certain ways. 1.7. Audio and Video While most of the Web is made up of text, audio and video have become increasingly common over the past few years as more and more Internet users are on high-speed connections. As audio and video have become increasingly common, many new opportunities have arisen for effective communication online. Designers and website owners have plenty of options in how they communicate with their visitors, and audio and video have some definite strengths that make them a tremendous method of communication. 2. Challenges of Creating a Website with Clear Communication In order to build a website that effectively and clearly communicates with visitors, a number of challenges need to be overcome. Not all websites are the same, so challenges may differ from one website to the next, but the challenges discussed below are some of the most common. 2.1. Too Much Content One of the biggest challenges that designers have to overcome is simply deciding on the amount of content and information to use. Of course, having a lot of quality information is a good thing, but it can also get in the way and make it difficult to communicate clearly with visitors. In many cases, websites with less content have an easier time effectively communicating a particular message to visitors because there is no excess to get in the way. By trying to fit a lot of content onto a page, the website owner can very easily create a cluttered page that confuses visitors. Primary messages are often overpowered by the busyness of a page, and sometimes the content may even send mixed or unclear messages. 2.2. Every Visitor is Different When developing websites, one needs to keep in mind that each visitor is unique and that it is impossible to classify all of them in the same group. Websites are designed with their target audience in mind, but even within that group of users, some diversity will still exist. These differences can have an impact on the communication of the website, because not every visitor will respond in the same way or understand the same messages. How are visitors different? First, demographics play a role. A website is likely to attract visitors from all over the globe, and a visitor in one part of the world will differ from a visitor in another part of the world. Age and sex will also be important factors. Beyond demographics, not every visitor will have the same purpose in visiting the website. They may be looking for different things or have different agendas on the website. Visitors will also come from a variety of sources, and visitors from one source will not always have the same characteristics as visitors from another source. Additionally, not all of your visitors will have the same level of knowledge of the subject of your website. All of these things make each visitor unique, and they all have an impact on the communication between the website and the user. 2.3. Clarity Communicating through a website is easy. Every website communicates in a number of different ways, even unintentionally. Communicating with clarity, on the other hand, is much more of a challenge. Because of the short amount of time that a new visitor is likely to spend on a website before leaving, there is a strong need for the website to quickly and clearly communicate. In order for a message to be clear, there must be a clear purpose and priority of the website that is understandable to the visitor; there must not be too much noise or clutter; and the message must be communicated in a way that it can be understood by the visitor. Blogs can sometimes be difficult for new visitors to quickly understand the purpose of. Macalicious uses a small box at the top of the page to quickly communicate the website’s purpose and background so that new visitors can immediately know something about it.

2.4. Keeping Communication Brief, But Complete Because of the need for clarity and the benefits of communicating quickly, there are advantages to keeping messages as short and concise as possible. A brief, clear message will generally be most effective for communicating quickly online. Of course, there are exceptions to this, such as situations where in-depth articles are used to provide detailed information to visitors who are interested in such information. Keeping a message brief and complete is a major challenge. One of the reasons taglines are so effective is that they can communicate something significant about the company or the website in a brief statement that, ideally, leaves a memorable impression on the visitor. Shuteye uses three simple short questions at the top of its home page to help identify visitors who could benefit from its offerings. If a visitor answers “Yes” to these questions, he or she immediately has a reason to look into the report offered by Shuteye. The communication at the top of the page is brief but highly effective for filtering potential customers.

2.5. Having Personality Online communication is unlike forms of communication that allow face-to-face interaction between two people. In online communication, the human visitor receives a message from a website, not directly from a person. However, the most effective communication generally occurs on websites that show some kind of personality in that communication. The website is a representation of the company or the person behind it, and showing that in the communication is important. Digital Mash, the portfolio website of designer Rob Morris, shows some personality with the tagline “Hero for Hire.” While there are tons of designer portfolio websites out there, Rob’s stands out in part because this statement shows some personality.

2.6. Not Overpowering the Communication with the Design The design and appearance of a website should be used strategically to enhance the message of the website, but it can also become an overpowering element that hinders communication. The content of the website is of primary importance, while the appearance of the website should be used to make the visit more pleasant, memorable and easier. The design of a website should not become a priority over the content, or else the website will suffer in usability. Pixelhaven’s minimalist design allows the company’s message to take center stage, rather than compete and potentially interfere with the message.

2.7. Gaining the Trust of Visitors Depending on your type of website or the purpose of your communication, one of the biggest challenges may be simply gaining the trust of visitors. One example would be a sales page. When a page communicates something to visitors in an attempt to convince them to buy something, there is a natural resistance to trust. Overcoming this is a major challenge. SEO Group uses testimonials from satisfied clients at the top of its page to help build trust.

2.8. Getting and Keeping Attention If you have an audience with a very short attention span and that is quick to close the browser or visit another website, getting and keeping its attention is a necessary prerequisite to effective communication. This also goes back to the issue of having a clear and concise message that communicates to visitors before they get confused or bored with the website. If visitors arrive at a website and cannot easily understand its purpose or what it offers them, they’re likely to move elsewhere. 3. What Should Be Communicated When creating a website, what things should you focus on in terms of communication? Knowing what should be communicated is a key step that cannot be overlooked. While the answer to this question will vary from one website to the next, the basics are discussed below. 3.1. Purpose of the Company or Website The most important message that must be communicated by every website is its purpose. Some visitors will likely already be familiar with the website or the company behind it, but many may not. As visitors arrive at the website, they should be able to quickly and accurately understand why the website exists and what is offered, and from this they should be able to determine if it is something that interests them. When visitors arrive at a website that does not clearly communicate its purpose or what it does, it almost always results in a frustrating visit, which leads to a website not achieving maximum effectiveness for its owner. AnswerJam communicates its purpose by answering the question “What is answerJam?” on the home page.

3.2. What is Offered? In addition to simply understanding the purpose of the website, visitors should also be able to quickly learn what the company or website offers them. Of course, this will vary from one website to another. E-commerce websites need to clearly communicate to visitors the types of products that can be purchased. Service companies should clearly communicate the services that are available to visitors. Websites that are content-rich, such as blogs, should communicate to new visitors what type of content is available to visitors and subscribers. Elegant Themes offers premium WordPress themes for an annual membership fee. The website uses a light blue box to quickly and clearly communicate the details of what is offered to visitors.

3.3. How Can Visitors Benefit? Simply listing services or products that are available may not be enough. In most cases, the website should communicate to visitors how these products and services can specifically benefit them and why they would be better off with them. Wipee List is a free online service that allows you to make and keep track of your own to-do list. Wipee List communicates to visitors that it can help them easily get in control of their tasks. This benefit is emphasized over the actual features of the service.

3.4. What Action Can Visitors Take? If a website does an effective job of clearly communicating its purpose, including what is offered and how it can benefit visitors, some of those visitors will want to take action. But is it clear what type of action they should take and how they can do so? Of course, e-commerce websites should make it easy for visitors to take action by buying items. Service companies should make it clear how visitors can take the next step towards using their services. Can visitors place an order online? Should they fill out a contact form to have someone get in touch with them? Should they call the company by phone? Only Human is a community where people can share a story to help others or post a question and ask for help from other users. The two basic actions of sharing a story and asking for advice are made very clear by simple navigation in the header that leads to these two actions.

1. Tips for Effective Communication: Now that we’ve looked at how websites communicate with visitors, some typical challenges and what should be communicated, here are some tips that can be put into practice to help with the process of developing websites that communicate effectively. 4.1. Prioritize The most important step to developing a website that features clear communication is prioritizing your messages and knowing exactly what should be communicated to visitors. If you’re not able to easily state the main point, purpose or message of your website, it’s unlikely that visitors will be able to understand that message accurately. Most websites, especially larger ones, have multiple messages that are communicated throughout their pages. In these cases, it’s important to determine a priority so that the most important messages are given more prominence. LightCMS has prioritized the simplicity and ease of use of its product. The home page, “Features” page and “Why LightCMS” page all prominently display a message that emphasizes this point.

4.2. Determine What Visitors Should Know About the Company or Website Every company and website has something that it specifically wants visitors to learn about it. It’s critical that this is identified, otherwise it will be impossible to communicate it effectively to visitors. Ideally, the website would be used as a tool to brand the company, so the messages that are being communicated should fit the overall branding efforts and strengthen those efforts. Checkout offers point-of-sale software for Macs. It has determined what is most important for visitors to know about the software and makes it clear with the simple statement, “Get a Mac. Start a Store.”

4.3. Keep it Simple Communicating effectively is much easier when the messages are simple and when excess can be eliminated. Any way that online communication can be simplified (without losing anything important) will make it easier for you and your visitors. In some cases, this may mean cutting down on communicating too many different things and just focusing on the most important aspects. By reducing the amount of information that is communicated, each message or piece of information will have more of an impact. Umbrella Today? is an outstanding example of keeping it simple. While there are plenty of options for checking the weather online, Umbrella Today is aimed at those who simply want to know if they’ll need an umbrella. Enter your zip code and you’ll get an answer.

While most websites will not be able to practically achieve this level of simplicity, it is a good example of what can be achieved when excess communication is cut out. 4.4. Keep it Relevant to Your Target Audience Because your visitors are likely to be diverse, it’s important to consider your target market and audience when developing the website. Who is the most critical audience for your company and website? The website should be designed and developed so that it can communicate specifically with these visitors. Additional efforts can be taken to communicate with other audiences as well, but the target audience should be prioritized; and if sacrifices are made, they should be made in other areas. FreeAgent provides online accounting for freelancers and small businesses. Its target audience is not large companies that are looking for a more complex accounting system. The customers it is targeting are not likely to be experts in accounting, and they’ll probably be interested in simplicity in an accounting system. FreeAgent effectively keeps its message relevant to this target audience by stating that it is “Accounting for the rest of us.” If a visitor has been frustrated by other more complex accounting systems, they’re likely to immediately feel that FreeAgent was made with them in mind.

4.5. Make the Message Impossible to Miss The most effective way to ensure that visitors receive the most important messages of a website is by making them nearly impossible to miss. This can be done in a few different ways, but using large text, colored text or some other design technique to make the message stand out are common. Other techniques include automatically loading audio, video and pop-ups, each of which brings its own usability issues and concerns. Treemo Labs uses a large bold font to immediately communicate what services it offers.

4.6. Style Text Messages can easily be made to stand out by using bold text, colored text or larger font sizes. These things are all visual clues to visitors that something is important and prioritized. Of course, the more that is added to a website, the less impact that piece of text will have. For example, if a page is styled in a very basic manner, with only one line that stands out in large bold text, this line will be extremely noticeable and likely have a significant impact. On the other hand, if a page using bold or colored text in several different places and various font sizes all over the place, the result is that nothing will really stand out because there is not enough uniformity. Another option for styling text is demonstrated by Auditude. It uses a simple change in background color to create a box that separates a particular section of text. As a result, that section of text stands out.

4.7. Use Headers and Sub-Headers On pages that consist of a significant amount of text, breaking it up and identifying the main points with headers and sub-headers can be very effective. Headers not only help to make the text more readable by creating white space and using bold font to add variety to the page, but they also communicate a structure of the content to visitors and can summarize the primary messages of the content. 4.8. Make Everything Count, or Get Rid of It When it comes to communication online, it’s very easy to complicate a message by adding more than is necessary. The best solution is to use only what has an impact. Make everything count, or just get rid of it. If text or an image doesn’t really serve a purpose, it’s only complicating things by cluttering the most important messages. In this situation, you’re better off without it, and the result will be a simpler, clearer message. The website for Silverback contains no unnecessary text. Above the fold, visitors see a list of what Silverback does, and further down the page are some more details on the service, but only essential information is included.

1. Goals for Communication When Developing a Website As you’re designing and developing websites, here are some goals to keep in mind that should help you stay focused on creating ones that communicate effectively. 5.1. Clarity One of the major goals of communication for website designers, developers and owners should be to present a clear message through the website. Regardless of what methods are used to achieve this clarity, the message must not be difficult for visitors to recognize or understand. By the time visitors leave the website, they should have received and understood the primary message. Tickerville is a blog and a community for traders. The website has a welcome message that clearly states its purpose. When visitors arrive on the website and are greeted by this statement of purpose, they know immediately if they fit into the target audience. If they do, they’re much more likely to feel at home on the website because they know it is for them.

5.2. Communication that Truly Helps the Business and Visitors While clarity is critical, clarity alone does little good for the business if the right message is not conveyed. Of course, the website will be most effective for the business and most useful to visitors if the messages being communicated are the most appropriate and significant ones. LongTermClients offers business greeting cards, but that is not quite clear simply from the name LongTermClients. Below the title of the website, it says “business greeting cards,” which makes it much easier for visitors to know what the website is all about, and which should also improve the results of the website for the company.

5.3. Consistency of Message Particularly with websites, consistency must be addressed. While the website’s home page may do an effective job of clearly communicating with visitors, many visitors will be entering the website through other pages. Are those secondary pages equally effective in communicating the same message? Secondary pages likely include additional information and messages for visitors, but the website should work as a whole to create a unified, consistent message. 5.4. Design that Enhances the Message The appearance and style of the website should fit and complement the communication that is taking place, not interfere with it. A great-looking website is a wonderful thing, but it should never exist at the expense of its content or communication. 5.5. Communication that Relates to the Target Audience In order for the website to maximize effectiveness, the communication must be relevant to the target audience of the website. If the website targets a specific audience, but the communication isn’t catered to them, the content will be ineffective. Make it a priority to meet your visitors at their level, whatever that level may be. Last.fm uses a subtle but effective twist to the standard search box. Rather than simply saying “Search,” it asks the visitor “What music do you like?” Because its target audience consists of music lovers of all kinds, this simple question above the search box encourages visitors to enter a response of their own. Once they search for something that they like, they may find something that keeps them on the website for a while.

5.6. Use of Website Structure to Build on Communication Part of building a website that communicates effectively is developing a clear website structure and navigation. A highly usable website with an effective structure can help further improve communication by making it clear to visitors what is available on the website and where they can go to find what they are looking for. Help make it easier for visitors to find what they want, and you’ll improve the overall communication that takes place. Gallery website Pattern Tap uses effective categorization to create structure and to make it super easy for visitors to find what interests them.

1. Results of Good Communication Websites that are able to achieve effective communication with visitors benefit in several different ways. Likewise, websites that do not communicate effectively usually struggle in these areas. 6.1. Visitors who Understand the Purpose of a Website A website that communicates effectively will benefit immensely if visitors are able to understand what the website is all about; and the experience will also be more pleasant for and useful to them. It’s hard to build a successful website that doesn’t start with a solid foundation of effective communication. 365 Days of Astronomy uses a spot in its sidebar right below the logo and branding area to briefly explain the purpose of the website and what it offers to visitors.

6.2. Improved Branding Another significant result of effective communication is improved branding. If the message or purpose of the website is communicated effectively to visitors, it will leave an impression on them that will help form their image of the company. Branding is important online and off, and the messages being sent are a major factor. 6.3. Reduced Bounce Rates Websites that communicate effectively will be more user-friendly and more helpful to visitors. Fewer visitors typically leave such websites quickly as a result of not being able to find what they are looking for. Instead, they’re likely to remain on the website for a longer period of time and view a higher number of pages. Because of effective communication, visitors find the right content easily. 6.4. Less Frustration for Visitors We’ve all had the unpleasant experience of being on a website that simply doesn’t communicate well with visitors. Maybe the purpose of the website was unclear, or maybe you weren’t sure how to find what you were looking for. Websites that fail to communicate effectively frustrate many visitors, which is obviously not a good way to build a successful website. 6.5. More Sales, Leads, Subscribers, etc. Websites have all kinds of different goals; but regardless of what the specific goals of your website are, the website is more likely to achieve them with effective communication. Whether you’re selling products, promoting a service, building a blog readership, developing a social network or simply providing information, communication is essential to success. The website of Mia & Maggie uses color to make the text “Free shipping” stand out. By drawing more attention to that statement, the company will likely receive more orders from people who want to take advantage of the offer. Keeping that text white would likely not produce the same results.

6.6. Less Unnecessary Inquiries If visitors can’t find what they’re looking for on your website or if they’re not sure what is offered, you’re likely to receive emails or contact form submissions that could be avoided with better communication. Receiving inquiries is certainly not a bad thing, but when you’re answering questions that are either already answered on the website or are asked repeatedly but not answered on the website, a breakdown in communication has occurred somewhere. Websites that do a good job of communicating with visitors may receive some of these kinds of inquiries from visitors who don’t make any effort to find the information, but generally they will receive less unnecessary inquiries because visitors will be able to find what they are looking for without needing to ask for help. About the Author Steven Snell is a Web designer and blogger. He actively maintains his own blog at Vandelay Design, where he frequently publishes articles about design, collections of resources and inspirational galleries. You can also follow him on Twitter. (al)

© stevensnell for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 87 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Submit to Reddit | Submit to Facebook | Who is linking?

Post tags: communication, design, guidelines, principles