It used to be all you had to do is create a new startup, polish your Web 2.0 buttons and people would sign up for your service, and pay you. That was about 500,000 apps ago. Today with services like oAuth through Twitter and Facebook, getting visitors to join isn’t the issue – getting them to actually use your service and therefore value it and therefore pay for it is the nut you have to crack.

And emails (paraphrased to protect the guilty) like this one don’t cut it:

Dear Bob Walsh,

We’ve noticed that you haven’t logged in to your ACME account and we want to make sure you know how easy it is to get your support department set up.

We Know How Busy You Are
We want to help you see the value of ACME right away, so we’ve boiled it down to the quick steps you can do right now to get started with ACME:… (And another 7 bullets, 5 links and 399 words I [yes, I counted] I don’t plan to read.)

By the time I get this email, I barely remembered what this app did, let alone felt motivated to go to it. And while I’m sure the startup is trying hard with this missive to reconnect with me, sending me a long list of things to do is not the way to get me back. Such is the fate of startups who don’t sink the hook deep enough in this instant gratification, attention-starved world.

Prove your worth fast, earn your keep every day, and then I buy your app. Maybe.

Contrast that to an app like Buffer. What does Buffer have that a couple of hundred other Twitter-centric apps lack? Immediacy. As soon as I joined as a free member, I’d installed Buffer’s Chrome extension (could have done FireFox, Safari), hooked buffer into Twitter, and was using it. Like in under a minute, tops. That’s immediacy. And that’s why I started paying for the service.

So what can you do to give first time users of your app immediate value? Well,

• Look at the value to your customers of your app. What chunk of value is quickest/easiest to deliver? Focus on that, first, then everything else.
• Give them a sample data set so they can play with it, interact with it, screw with it, and see your app in action before they have to enter real data.
• The next time you find an app you like and value, dissect how they did it.
• Make a Chrome/FireFox extension that provides even just a taste of value in the app they are already using, their browser.
• Send them a report – even if it’s based on dummy data – so they have some sense of what real value lies ahead.
• Share a story about some other user (with their permission of course) who’s using your app and how.
• Share something with them that gets them onboard before something else gets their attention.
• Go through the process from first visit to actually getting value and count clicks and fields. Then think hard on how you delete, delay, defer or postpone each of those hurdles.

You’re reading It’s not getting them to try, it’s getting them to buy… from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

With something north of 10,000 Twitter related tools, services, and apps, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed and undermotivated looking for tools to help your startup. Here’s 5 new Twitter tools I’d recommend, and why.

Buffer

What: Repeat your tweets so more people see them.
Pros: Slick interface, good analytics, free account gets you real results.
Cons: Plan on going Pro for $10/month. I did.
Want: Built-in analysis of best times to autotweet to reach a) current followers, b) follower of a given Thought Leader/brand.
Comments: They just added autoposting to Facebook, check out Goodies, and they have a WordPress plugin to extend reach/range of tweets about what you’re posting (see bottom of this post). In a word, Awesome.

Buffer – Wow!

PeerIndex

What: You can only engage with so many people – how do you prioritize? All things being equal or unknown, by their reach and influence. Alternative to Klout.
Pros: More ways to use PeerIndex than Klout, useful comparison tools, can include your URLs in your score when you claim your page. Group function looks interesting.
Cons: Top Topics and Sources have issues… but it’s in beta.
Want: Polish the few rough edges, a free plan for startups when they release!
Comments: Like Buffer, you can install a Chrome extension and see PeerIndex within Twitter. To be fair, can do the same with Klout.

PeerIndex

TweetStats

What: Clear stats on your Twitter performance.
Pros: Solid stats focusing on what you’re really doing with Twitter.
Cons: Free tool, could be faster. Google ads. Sometimes down – like right now.
Want: Would like to see a way to store your stats over time.
Comments: You should go light on analytics until you have something to measure, but this will give you a good clear picture of how you’re doing.

TweetStats

mentionmapp

What: Visual interface to what has the current attention of someone on Twitter.
Pros: Who are the people you respect on Twitter? Which people and topics (#hashtags) have their attention? That’s the problem this tool solves.
Cons: In beta, can’t change size of what’s displayed.
Want: Would like to see a downloadable list of mentioned people and hashtags – easier to work with.
Comments: Say there’s a blogger you want to do a guest post for – this is a great tool for understanding said blogger’s network and interests.

mentionmapp

goLook.at

What: URL shortener with a twist: Which link would get more clicks? http://bit.ly/hrbuTl or http://vxn.go.ly/funny/cats/video?
Pros: Better human clickability, increase in SEO since relevant keywords in a URL do matter. Several really good URL domains to shorten to.
Cons: Current site is functional, but !ugly. Not a brand name like Bit.ly.
Want: New site, better explanation, more social proof this works, better UX, Chrome extension like Buffer.
Comments: Heard about this service today – have not yet used it. But given a choice between Twitter’s shortener and one that produces a comprehensible shortened URL… This could be huge.

goLook.at

Start with the above: if you’re looking for more comprehensive lists of tools, check out The Most Comprehensive Twitter App List You’ll Ever Need.

You’re reading New Twitter tools for Startups in 2012 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

As we count down the days to a shiny new 2012, here’s another New Year’s Resolution to consider for your startup:

Resolution #2: I am going to engage more with my customers.

Enterprise companies are scrambling to engage more with their perspective and actual customers on multiple social media platforms, via relevant email, and realtime conversations on their sites. What are you doing to do the same? Here’s three specific ways that play to a startup’s strengths for your consideration:

Go realtime on your site. Customer questions lead to customer sales. If I have to submit a ticket, fill in a form, beg you for an answer to a question that’s roadblocking my purchase decision, how does that work to your benefit? Questions mean they’ve giving you the increasingly valuable gift of their attention: you want to make it as easy as possible for them to engage with you when, where and how they want. Increasingly, the when and where is your startup’s site, and the how is some form of live chat.

Two such services are SnapEngage (which I use) and Olark (which I’ve heard good things about). A snippet of JavaScript, a few settings and your are ready, willing and able to answer questions, engage with customers, and be there for your market. While there are other, enterprisey/corporate services that do the same thing, they are at best stuffy and at worse imitation customer support. Let your customer talk with the real you.

I use SnapEngage at 47hats to answer any self-funded startup founder’s questions I can. Most of my MicroConsults in 2011 started that way. In 2012, I’m going I want to be a lot more consistant with this form of engagement by being constantly available here from 4pm to 6pm Monday through Friday Pacific Time. Stop by and give it a try.

Send your customers email they want. It’s pretty simple: we are all drowning in marketing/sales email and starved for relevant/useful email. Here we startups have a huge advantage over all those clueless corporate idiots who do “email blasts” of marketing spam: we actually know what we’re talking about. Software solves problems and because you started your own software company, you became (I hope!) a authority on the problems facing your customers. Help them! Help them get more out of your product or service. Help them by sharing interesting posts, stories, videos, whatever.

Mailchimp.com – with its plethora of ebooks, videos, online classes, easy website integration, and a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers/12,000 emails/month is what you want to use. Integrate their double opt-in form (tip: use foobar, hellobar, wp-subscribers to build your subscriber list faster) with your site, pick a template and do a short, useful mailing once a month. Need content? How about a 30 second YouTube video on one nifty feature of your software and 3 really good posts relevant to your customers? Keep the marketing to a minimum, respect their time and good things will happen.

Go Social. Whether it’s Twitter and Facebook, Stack Overflow and Quora, LinkedIn and Google+, connect and engage with your current and future customers. I do not mean sell to them. I do not mean market to them. I mean engage with them, share with them, laugh with them, commensurate with them, be a person with them.

In case you missed the revolution, a significant percentage of the human race now uses social media to connect with other people. It’s time to intelligently get connected, if you haven’t already. The particulars of what is the best way for you and your startup to Go Social is a bit beyond this post; all I can recommend is resolve to show up, contribute, help other people and go very light on the marketing. It works.

You’re reading Startup New Year’s Resolution #2: Engage more. from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Go take a look right now at your site: What’s the first thing that catches your eye?

If it’s your logo, the start of a video, testimonials about your app – you have a problem.

If it’s the outdated look of your site, a sense too much is crammed into too small a space or that you’ve not updated your product in 6 months – you really have a problem.

The first thing that should get your visitor’s attention is your answer to their most important question: “Why should I care about this?”

If the first thing that gets their attention on your site doesn’t answer the question, nothing else matters. Not your site. Not your product.

The screenshot above is an example of how to do this right: Gauges has a very attractive site, but what starts the ball rolling is they answer the right question right off. And they do it in a way that:

• Speaks to their customers – not to just anyone.
• Focuses on what their product does for their customers.
• Explains at a high level how their product delivers what their customers care about.

The pitch, hook, headline is your answer to why you are worth one more precious second of your visitor’s time. How well does your site answer that question?

(If you think your site nails it – comment your URL. If it doesn’t, email me and I’ll try to make a quick suggestion. If you need more than a quick suggestion, let’s talk.)

You’re reading What’s the most important question about your startup? from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Well, I’ve been trying hard to resist the avalanche of Black Friday deals today, but I fell for one, and you should too:

$17 instead of $120? Grab it!

The megatrend is towards realtime web data and for good reason: the whole point of having a site is engagement. By the way, had to straighten out a few issues due to expired trial account, but thanks to James at GoSquared I’m all set.

James was able to work the problem with me live (there’s that realtime meme again!) using oLark. While I prefer snapengage.com, it’s vastly more satisfying a tech support experience being able to interactively get a problem handled than going the whole submit a ticket and wait routine.

You’re reading A deal I could not resist… from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Aging well!

Want a quick introduction to social media for your startup and getting “the media” to pay attention to it? Here’s Chapter 6 “Social Media and your Startup” from my book The Web Startup Success GuideGuide. (I rescued this sample chapter from obscurity at Apress.com).

What’s in this free chapter: Cluetrain, building social media radar, doing Twitter right , drinking from the RSS firehose with  Google Reader with PostRank, building your startup’s blog, getting big news blogger and media attention, creating a community.

And Interviews with: Andy Wibbels, Mike Gunderloy, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Rafe Needleman, Al Harberg, Les Suzukamo, Luke Armour, Ginevara Whalen, Matt Johnson, Veronica Jorden, and Maria Sipka. All good stuff, and some very good advice from people who know what they are talking about.

While the book is 2 years old, the content is current, useful, I’d like to think entertaining, exclusive, and free! Give it a read, let me know what you think.

You’re reading Rescuing from obscurity… from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

The Business of Software Conference starting today in Boston is live streaming, beginning at 9am Eastern. If you want to hear and watch some of the sharpest minds in the software business, get yourself registered on this page and start partaking.

Monday, October 24^th

• 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM Clayton Christensen – How to Create New Growth Businesses in a Risk-Minimizing Environment
• 10:45 AM – 11:45 AM Jason Cohen – Naked Business: How I made more money through honesty than through typical business behavior.)
• 11:45 AM – 12:45 PM Alex Osterwalder - Building Competitive Advantage through Business Model Thinking
• 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Dharmesh Shah – Insights And Musings On The Business of Software
• 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM Jeff Lawson
• 5:45 PM – 6:15 PM Tobias Lütke - How to make sure your business is on the right side of history through code and culture.

Tuesday, October 25^th

• 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Patrick McKenzie – Engineering Your Marketing Outcomes
• 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM Laura Fitton
• 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Josh Linkner - Unleashing Creativity
• 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM Rory Sutherland - Praxeology: Lessons from a lost science
• 2:30 PM – 3:15 PM Lightning Talks Five finalists present 15 slides in 30 seconds each. That’s 7 minutes 30 seconds, then sit down.

• Corey Reid, Freshbooks
• Karl Treier, Prospect Stream
• Patrick Foley, Microsoft
• Justin Goeres, JKI
• Tyler Rooney, 4ormat
• 3:45 PM – 4:45 PM Michael McDerment – CEO and Co-Founder of Freshbooks.
• 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM Peldi & John Nese – An Interview with John Nese

Wednesday, October 26^th

• 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Paul Kenny - The art of asking!
• 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM David Cancel
• 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Alexis Ohanian

You’re reading Give it a listen today! from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

I miss Steve. I miss him a lot. Especially after spending the past 4 hours trapped in the “Internal Error Occurred” debacle (reported here, here, and even here, and anywhere else Apple-centric on the web), unsuccessfully upgrading my iPad and iPhone to iOS5.

For my snickering Windows friends (I’m thinking of you, Pat!), today’s waste of what could have been a productive day began by being the good early adopter and pounding away at the iTunes upgrade button since 5am, then receiving the anointed Best New Thing about 10am, waiting about an hour for the inescapable backup, install, and then after all that, install fails with a bullshit “internal error occurred.” Again and again and again.

(* Image above is what you get if you try the “let’s restore not upgrade” solution. At least it’s honest. Stupidly lame, but honest.)

Contrast the “Internal Error Occurred” debacle to the Lion OS upgrade of July 20th – which was the most uneventful OS upgrade, ever, a month before Steve stepped down.

You’re reading Missing Steve, Reason #1: the “Internal Error Occurred” debacle. from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Note: The following screed is brought to in the public interest. If you’ve wouldn’t in a million years put the words “time” and “management” together, feel free to skip.

I started reading Jenny Blake’s fine Life After College: The Complete Guide to Getting What You Want this morning (Jenny: need a Life Way After College sequel and Kindle version!), and was globsmacked when I read the phrase “time management” in the intro. I’m looking forward to reading the entire book, but I just had to pound out this post.

“Time Management” is a poisoned meme; ingesting it any way, shape, form or media is a very, very bad idea.

I know, I know, you’ll say it’s just a shorthand for all the practices and methods aimed at improving personal productivity; you are probably googling right now where I’ve used the same phrase. Consider this post an act of contrition.

There never has, and there probably will never be, such a thing as “time management.” Time, at least for those who don’t get to play with supercolliders for a living, is a constant. It cannot be speeded up or slowed down or stuffed with extra needed hours. And, unless you’ve hotwired your genitals to an alarm clock, nothing, but nothing, happens at exactly at the start of any hour.

“Time management” in the last century went hand in hand with industrialism: a punctual (and time clock punching) workforce was a necessary prerequisite to manufacturing, and “scientific” management. But that was then, and this is now, and if you are reading this post you no more punch a clock than I do. So why let a catchword of the industrial age shape your thinking in this post-industrial society?

If I told you the first step to becoming more productive, to getting what you want from life, to success however you define it was “gravity management”, you’d laugh in my face. Trying to become more productive by managing time is no more an idiotic idea – and what a terrible waste it is trying to achieve it!

Words have power. And meme’s - conceptions of reality freeze-dried into phrases we seldom examine – can go boom in your face.

You’re reading Lies, Damn Lies! and Time Management from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

So there you are, with your startup wired up with every type of analytic instrumentation you could ask for. You got your Google Analytics, Google AdWords, your email engagement program of choice (it really ought to be MailChimp, IMO). And you have your social media data – how many Twitter followers you have, what people on Facebook think of you, how many people read your blog. To top it off, you’ve got your sales data in one form or another, and whatever other stats you’ve bought into.

And you know what all this data will do for you? Not one single thing. It’s just raw data–it doesn’t do anything. It’s your job to figure out what all this data means, how each of these different streams of information interrelate. Then, and only then, have you got actionable information so you can do more of what works, less of what doesn’t.

That’s where DigMyData.com comes in. You don’t need more facts, you’ve already got all the facts: what you need is a way to see all of the data you need in one place, at one time, on one screen. If you’ve ever tried to figure out if what you are doing is actually working based on all of your numbers – web site, email, social, revenue – you will want to put DigMyData to work immediately.

This online service is about asking questions, getting answers – answers that let you change where your startup is going. When you post and tweet more, do you sales go up? That day, that week, that month? When you post a video to YouTube, do the number of tech support emails/tickets drop, or rise? What happens in Google Analytics when you spend more time doing tech support and less on social media – nothing, more visits to the right pages that lead to a sale? What?

In a nutshell, you pick which types and sources of data you want to give DigMyData access to. Then you create not just comparison charts (Adwords spending vs. number of tweets/posts, etc.), but annotate that data with scenarios that you can test, and actions you’ve taken. For example, if during the rest of this month you do X, what do you predict will be the results in terms of revenue? Moreover, actions you take – improving your SEO, reaching out to talk to at least one customer a day for 15 minutes, updating your site – will be reflected in your data. With DigMyData, you can add those actions and scenarios as story points in your startup’s timeline, so when you look back in 3 weeks, months or whenever, you can see in the data their positive (or negative) effects.

I’ve been using DigMyData with one consulting client for the past 6 months and will continue using it as ProductivityToDo.com launches and WordPress for Startups goes on sale. Today is DigMyData’s official launch date, and they’re offering an extended free trial if you sign up now that runs the rest of 2011 so you can really see results. It’s a powerful, unique way to not just consume data but test scenarios and make decisions. Highly recommended.

You’re reading You have data. What you need is DigMyData. from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Thomas Friedman

You may have missed this post July 12th by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times: The Startup of You. Take a moment to read it.

The gist is that the startup mindset – hyperconnected, online, and above all else adaptable – is becoming the differentiating factor whether you will get a job in this economy, whether you will keep your job in this economy.

“I think something else, something new — something that will require our kids not so much to find their next job as to invent their next job — is also influencing today’s job market more than people realize.”

Let me preemptively whack a couple of comment-moles before they appear: obviously this is not true in all cases, obviously it depends on industry, segment, age, the company, etc., blah, blah, blah.

The question to be asking is does it apply to you before this becomes the business norm? And the meta question if you will, is just exactly how will you this year, month, day become more “startupy”, more demonstrably better at executing these attributes?

You’re reading Thomas Friedman gets it. Do you? from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

No, I’m not talking about how handsome, beautiful or sexy you are; I’m talking about how beautiful your web, desktop or especially your mobile app had better be.

We live in a world today that sees 5 new startups, 50 new books, 500 new sites and what feels like 5,000 new apps taking their walk down the runway, vying for our attention each and every day.

Your software can have super powers and functionalities that any geek would swoon over, but if its looks don’t jump off the screen neither you or it will get to first base.

“I think beauty is absolutely critical in launching an app today,” says Jenny Wager, CEO and Founder of LeftTurn Labs. “I can speak first and foremost as a user and it is simply unappealing to use an app that has a poorly designed icon and interface. No matter how functional the app, I can’t stand to use it if it is ugly”.

Jenny should know: her iPad app Next!, a task and project management app, is doing quite well, thank you very much (60,000 sales and counting).

“When creating Next! the ultimate goal was to improve productivity, but that absolutely should not mean that it have a utilitarian or poor design.  So many apps just focus on the features, but if people don’t like to look at it the features are irrelevant.  For productivity especially it is so important to provide a clean and visually appealing work space – cluttered space=cluttered mind.”

Next!

Not that Next! is all looks: its unique navigational system breaks new ground and provides a new and cool interface for battling those familiar project management demons. But there’s already more GTD-centric apps out for this one platform than you or I can count; how did LeftTurn Labs make this one app stand out of from the crowd?

“We had two main goals when designing Next!: 1) Make it easy to want to use and look at Next! every day, and 2) Increase users focus on their information,” said Jenny. “If you don’t like to look at your productivity app you certainly aren’t going to be more productive!  It was critically important that we made Next! beautiful so that people would be more inclined to use it all the time.”

We’ve gone from a world where everyone used the same three bland programs, to a world where which apps we choose to use are a powerful reflection of who we see ourselves as. And nobody wants to see ugly in the mirror.

(So you know – I bought Next! even though I already own way too many GTD apps because it looked damn good; nor did the current sale price of $0.99 hurt. Then I reached out to Jenny.)

You’re reading Beauty is not optional from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Smile!

If you make desktop software and you’re wondering how in the hell do you get on board the Mobile Bandwagon, study up on Smile (formerly Smile on My Mac). Here’s a little software company whose best-known product, TextExpander, was one of a number of such utilities three years ago, and now they’re are the talk of the Mac and iOS markets.

They didn’t get there with traditional advertising; their blog is nothing more than product updates in a Internet antique Kubrick theme, and any social media expert worth their fee would laugh at their Twitter/Facebook presence.

So how did they become the must-have iPad productivity App? On an operating system that makes the whole idea of running a background utility impossible?

First, Smile created an app that at least got them into the iOS game. Text Expander touch by itself is almost useless – if you want to use a text expansion you have to open the program, navigate to the right text expansion which gets it on the iOS clipboard, and then navigate back to whatever program you want to plop that text in. As a standalone app – last updated 8 months ago with almost as many 1-star rants as 5-star raves – not much to look at.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg.

1. Smile built an SDK for other iOS developers and gave it away free. Smile’s well-crafted, non-afterthought SDK is a snap to use (“About 10 minutes to completely, start to finish, integrate TextExpander into Twittelator, worked the VERY first time.” – Andrew Stone).
2. Then (I presume) they started cajoling other app makers to use Smile’s SDK. And they got 1 to do it. Then 5, 17, 25, 41 and as of today over 110 other iPad and iPhone apps are out in the wild, using Smile’s functionality free of charge to enhance their offerings, and by the way making TextExpander touch a must-have on an iOS device. (on sale for a $1.99 until 6/9 by the way.)
3. They also did one key bit of sponsorship, in my opinion: Sponsoring the Mac Power Users Podcast early on (I think show #18). Katie Floyd and David Sparks do a outstanding podcast that is one of my must-listen-now favorites. Smile was smart enough to recognize sponsorship done right to a narrowcast audience beats any but the most massive massive campaigns.
4. Here’s another smart move: today Smile began selling Take Control of TextExpander ebook for $10 at their site. I bought mine before I finished their email – other Take Control ebooks have been excellent guides to programs. Smile didn’t wait for some traditional publisher to decide to write a book about them (they’d have a long wait); they get that in our postindustrial world Every Company is a Media Company and that they have to step up. [Disclosure: I'm up to something re text expansion that you'll get to see very soon - and I'm really happy to see some market validation of my gut opinions.]

So today’s takeaway: Stop thinking about other small software vendors as competitors and start thinking of them as a market. How can your product help them ship a better app? Smille did it – and so did Dropbox and Evernote.

You’re reading Smiling all the way to the Bank from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

After years of being pegged as the impotent giant, Microsoft turned heads and changed expectations today with its first public showing of Windows 8. Windows 8 isn’t Windows 7 with a ribbon bar and new lip gloss: it’s jawdroppingly impressive.

Assuming there’s real code behind this demo, Microsoft just kicked PCs as we know them to the curb while confirming something most people get in 5 minutes with an iPad: mobile tablets will rule, and soon.

If you’re reading this on your Windows Vista (insert virtual paper sympathy card) or Windows 7 desktop whatever, you may want to skip clicking through to this video – it will just make you soul ache for an experience that is not going to ship for a while. And if you’re reading this on your iMac or iPad, you can take consolation that Apple will be be announcing iCloud next week – pay no attention to that nagging little voice you hear saying, “that came out of Microsoft!?.”

By the way, the interface, and Windows 8 will be written in HTML5 and Javascript. Glaringly absent: Any mention of .NET.

You’re reading The Revenge of Microsoft: Windows 8 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

[This is a free sample from my ebook, Startup Sites that Sell! - Creating and Marketing your Unique Selling Proposition. You can get the rest of this ebook designed to substantially improve your startup web site for $24.95 USD, or, you can take advantage of tomorrow's Bits du Jour Sale and grab it for a mere $12.47, including The Developer's <code> ,a 50-lesson ebook by Ka Wai Cheung, of Chicago-based web development shop We Are Mammoth.]

Startup Sites that Sell! is a re-release of my popular MicroISV sites that Sell! ebook with much better formatting for iPads, tablets and printing.
—–

Before we can get to the good stuff, we need to do a bit of garbage collection. We need to take a look at six mistakes startups often make. These are mistakes for one simple reason: they turn off sales.

Mistake 1: Where’s your Hook?

We will talk about the Hook in much more detail in the next section, but the lack of a Hook is easily the number one mistake I see developers who sell software make. Simply put, the Hook answers the question, “Why should I spend another second on this web site?”

You have to put yourself in the mind of someone who for the very first time arrives at your site. They may be coming from Google search results, your Google Adwords campaign, your signature line in a forum posting, a blog post that mentions your product and three others or who knows where.

The first time visitor has no emotional investment in staying on your home page or landing page whatsoever. Yet. What you sell is completely irrelevant to them. For now. They have no reason to believe you actually sell something, let alone something that they want.

The Hook is your initial statement which answers why your product is relevant to them, why you might be credible as a solution provider and how exactly your solution is in one or more ways better than either continuing to have the problem or whatever they are doing or using right now.

Note: Initial means just that. It not everything about your product; it’s just enough to get them to read the next paragraph of your copy on your home page.

Second Note – it has to be the very first thing on the page that gets their attention – because if it’s not, either because it isn’t concise enough, compelling enough, big enough – most first time visitors will leave right then and there.

Mistake 2: Ugly hurts.

The bald fact of the matter is that most programmers suck at graphic design. Making a web page look good is hard work – you can do it, but it’s not a trivial effort.

If your site is ugly, no matter how much time you put into it, no matter how long you’ve had it, no matter who made it, it’s ugly. And ugly costs you sales.

I have seen this particular anti-pattern among more than a few attendees at both the Software Industry Conference and the European Shareware Conference: Joe has been a microISV longer than that term has been around. He did his site ten years ago when blinking text, frames and five different fonts for tons of text were cool. Joe gets emotional and upset if anyone tells him his child web site is ugly: he resists any and all suggestions to update it and thereby improve his sales.

If Joe sounds a bit like you, it’s time to get over it. Your web site is nothing more than a way to sell (and possibly deliver) you software. It is not your child, your puppy or a part of your anatomy. If it’s ugly, it’s ugly and it’s costing you sales.

Mistake 3: Too many words.

Consider the following. If I convince you my software will let you code five times faster and better than you can right now, really convince you of this, how much time and effort would you put into learning how to use it? A lot. You’d read every page of my documentation, my web site, my support forum. You’d watch every screencast, checkout every function, try every example.

But you’d only do all this if you were convinced it was worth your while. Enter Mistake #3. Maybe it’s the 23 bullet points of features, or the 14 paragraphs that explain 28 different functions you can perform in your app, or even the 12 paragraph testimonial from “A Customer”.

Too much text before you’ve convinced that first time visitor that you are worth their precious time drives away customers in droves. That visitor (it’s too early to call them even a potential customer) takes one look and without reading a single one of your 14 bullet points clicks off your page. They have no reason to put the time and effort into reading all your text, so they don’t.

Mistake 4: Google AdSense on your site.

Just as there is no better way of reaching your target market presently than Google AdWords, there is no better way of convincing visitors to forever leave your site than running Google Ads on it.

Text ads fine are if you are running a professional blog – they are your revenue model. But if you are selling a product, it breaks trust with the visitor to sell them other people’s products and services when by happy circumstance they’ve come looking for what you have to offer. You want – you need – their undivided attention for at least a few seconds if you are going to have any hope of selling what you have to offer.

Text ads also poison your business credibility: If you don’t have enough confidence in your product to not try and make a few bucks advertising other people’s products on your site, why on earth would I consider buying from you?

Mistake 5: The Invisible Man.

“Psst! Wanna to buy some software that will solve your problems? Just give me your credit card number and we’ll get it out to you in a jiffy. Never mind who I am – what do you care? You want that problem solved or not?”

If this sounds like what you’d expect to hear in a dark alley or in a badly done online scam, you’re right. It is most emphatically not what you want your customers to be hearing when you’re selling your software to them.

The lack of an easy to find, clear legal identity in the real world is a sales killer. Other than drug addicts and spies, we all want to know who we are dealing with, who exactly is asking us to give them money for the promise they will give us something we want in exchange.

Yet at software site after software site, the identity of the seller is either buried 3 clicks down, missing key information like a physical address and telephone number or cloaked in corporate-speak.

I think for developers in North America, Europe, and elsewhere in the developed world this mistake is born from naively thinking that just because all the companies you know and interact with are anonymous “thems” with no visible people involved, you can be too. Leaving aside companies who succeed bucking this trend, you need to remember those companies are a hundred to a hundred thousand times your size, have been consistently selling their products for years if not decades. They have established trust – you need to earn it.

Not being able to find a physical address, telephone number and business name within one click of the home page is a deal breaker for me when shopping for software: most people feel the same.

For developers trying to sell to North Americans and Europeans, the widespread perception (based on the effects of years of spam more than anything else) that software from Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East or Africa is also dangerous is a huge, real issue. But the solution is not hiding your identity – it’s making it abundantly clear who you are.

Mistake 6: Customer as Circus Animal.

For some reason, some startups think that just because “real software companies” treat them like crap, that they should do the same. So they spend time and effort creating ever more complex hurdles between what their customers want to do and what they are selling.

Here’s a couple of examples:

• Requiring people to register before you will let them download a trial.
• Requiring people to register before they can send you a pre-sale question.
• Requiring people to complete a form and surrender their email before you tell them what your software costs.
• Requiring people to email you before you will tell them what your software costs.

If by some great good fortune (and maybe the help of this ebook) people actually are prepared to trust you and spend their time on your software, why would you slap them in the face and make them jump through various hoops?

Again, this is an attitude and a worldview you’ve probably been subjected to – it’s not the way a microISV or startup should function if they want to succeed. More often than not in those large companies, collecting data becomes a goal onto itself with nothing but bureaucratic inertia going for it.

Wrap up.

In preparation of getting to the meat of this ebook, we’ve just eyeballed a lineup of mistakes fledgling microISVs often make. Most of these mistakes stem from one of two sources: thinking your microISV or startup should act like a “real” company or assuming that because you’re a developer not a marketing suit or copywriter you can’t create a web site that’s attractive, engaging, professional and effective and that that’s okay.

These six mistakes:

• Not hooking your first time visitor before they can punch their next hyperlink,
• Forgetting that attractive attracts and ugly doesn’t,
• Drowning your visitor with words,
• Dividing their attention with other people’s ads,
• Not leveling with them as to who you are,
• Making them jump though hoops that from their point of view has no benefit…

…will all cost you significant sales. But clinging to either of the two attitudes I mentioned above will likely doom your efforts.

The good news is you don’t have to be anything you’re not – a new software company bravely coming to market to make people’s lives better. And by approaching the marketing you need to master to sell not as some dreaded poison that will turn you into a phony suit-droid but as a programming problem, as a way of “programming” your site to get the outputs you want, you can succeed beyond your hopes.

In the next section we’ll dive into that programming problem – marketing your software. It’s not the first time people have needed to solve this problem, so why not do what savvy and experienced programers do: apply a design pattern to solve the problem?

You’re reading Why Startups fail to sell. from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Status quo to digital disrupters: keep out.

This may be off-topic if you’re reading this blog because I mostly focus on startups and microISVs, but stick with me for a moment.

Who is going to make the future, or at least the part pertaining to how people interact with idea-containers formally known as books?

Actually, I’m nominating you for the job. Because the difference today between those of us who ship code for a living and those of us who ship words for a living is almost no difference at all. How do you succeed as a bootstrapping startup? You take deep domain knowledge and a professional discipline applied to the craft of developing software, work your butt off while trying to build a meaningful relationship with people who elect to become your market. That’s the job description for any non-fiction writer today.

If you read this blog, you’ll have gathered I am a big time fanboy of Seth Godin. After reading his books, listening to him speak, having the good fortune to interview him, I’ve been very closely watching his decision to thumb his nose at traditional publishers and do something disruptive, awesome and risky with his Domino Project. I’m hoping to help him out in some small way as a member of his Street Team because I believe he’s betting the farm on a wild crazy idea that will ultimately benefit millions of people, like more than a few startup founders I’ve gotten to know over the past few years.

Back to why I’m nominating you for the job of deciding the future, or at least this part of it. Simply put, if the geeks like us support Seth’s publishing killer app, a whole lot of non-geeks will get on board too. But if online people don’t make it clear that when it comes to idea containers, they want the future and they want it now, traditional publishers will continue squeezing a few more dollars out of a revenue model that well past its sell-by date.

Whether it’s telcos who want to favor their bits over your bits, record labels who smack around people with lawsuits or traditional publishers who want to defend their right to decide what, when and how you read, it’s the same thing: those who benefit from the status quo will defend the status quo against those who seek to disrupt it.

And if you’re building a startup, or running an “impossible” one-person global software company, you too are committed to disrupting the status quo.

You’re reading If not you, who? from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.