Month: October 2006

The Importance of a Good Demo

I suppose I am going to need to work on improving my skills at explaining our product. The last 3 times I have had to explain our product to someone, and have shown them screen shots, nobody has said “wow” or “when can I begin using it?”

What has changed? We have added extra functionality, extra features, and as a direct result the product takes more effort to understand. Plus, I don’t have a cohesive demo. I just have a bunch of screen shots and they don’t link together.

When the application was simply a time tracking tool with reports, people got it fast. Now that we’ve added messages, projects, and a project timeline, it takes people twice as long to absorb and evaluate.

So what am I going to do? I’m going to work on my presentation. I need to get better at explaining how simple it is to use. I’m also going to be evaluating our features. Can we drop any features that we have added? Are there any features that don’t add enough value? Can we remove them?

I think our product is very strong, and will definitely capture a large market share… things like this need to be sorted out now, rather than after product launch.

Choosing a Platform: Ruby on Rails vs. Other Languages

Here’s a few links about Ruby on Rails vs. Other Languages which I received from a Ruby on Rails developer we are working with on a separate project.

Designed Settings Page and Our Default User Picture

Today, I designed the settings page for our web application. On this page you can enter and change your username and password, view billing receipts, change your credit card, export your data (in CSV format), and also upload a user picture.

For the user picture, we’ve decided to go with the typical square image, since that’s what everybody is familiar with. We’re thinking about trying something unique, and that is to also allow you to upload an image of your logo. It’s unique because only you will be able to see it.

As you can see, we allow people to upload two images. The image of the cowboy just might be our default user profile picture. We’re still trying to decide. What should we name him?

That’s an example of how it will look once you integrate both images into the header. It’s a nice and clean look, and is one of the ways people can personalize the web app.

Live Chat as a Sales and Support Tool

We’ve installed several live-chat systems over the past few years for clients of our web consulting business. I never pondered the day that we might consider a chat service for ourselves. Now I am, as Roundup will require sales efforts as well as support.

To integrate such a system, I think we will likely experiment first with the meebo me widget. It is a free (currently) web based product that allows you to integrate live chat onto your web site — and the best part is that instead of having additional software, the instant messages can come in through AIM or MSN.

Depending on the results, we may choose to “upgrade” to a better product that is dedicated to this sort of thing. There are dozens on the market. I like the idea of experimenting, first, and seeing whether it is effective or not, and if we increase sales as a result.

Something I’m especially interested in trying, would be comparing sales data one month to the next, and using live-chat for sales and support in only one of those months. Given enough on and off testing we could determine if providing the service results in more sales or not (at least roughly).

Here’s a list of some of the live chat services we’re considering:

www.meebome.com
Completely free, with the drawback that it doesn’t have reporting built in, and works off of your existing chat client (AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.). The ability to experiment with a free service is appealing.

www.phplivesupport.com
This is one that I used about a year ago for a client’s project. It works well, and has a desktop application that can chime everytime you receive a chat request. The license fee is for 1-year and you have to renew, it otherwise it quits working.

www.boldchat.com
BoldChat came highly recommended by a number of people in the 9rules Network.

www.livehelper.com
Livehelper.com is a hosted service, meaning we pay a monthly fee to use the service.

www.liveperson.com
LivePerson was to my knowledge the first company to do live chat. I looked into it a long time ago and it was much more expensive than all of the other services out there.

Update: Plugoo is another one that uses MSN, Yahoo, and Google Talk (similar to Meebome).

Other ways to handle support:

www.mojohelpdesk.com
Mojo Helpdesk may be just the ticket we need, it only costs $49/mo and comes with a support ratings system that would enable us to see how well we are doing. The other option is to just use email and handle support that way.

Update: Mailroom from Sprout is a tool for handling email communication.

Update: SupportTrio sounds like a viable solution, and it actually combines trouble ticketing with live chat, which sounds great.

Update: Get Satisfaction is a new web service that a lot of companies are using which is a sort of distributed support service. Other customers can help people with questions, and you can also pitch in.

Update: UserVoice looks like a really great service. Simpler than Get Satisfaction which I mentioned above. Is a tool for support + handling suggestions. Watch this video and see an example.

Update: An interesting help desk web app is ZenDesk.

Update: WebsiteAlive has been recommended.

Amazon S3

amazon s3Several web applications have begun using Amazon S3 for all of their data storage needs. It’s a fascinating idea because they offer incredible prices for data storage, all o fthe redundancy and backup you could ask for, and remove the cost of dealing with hard drives, computers, and backup ourselves.

I’m not quite sure yet whether Amazon S3 can store a database, and what it would really cost considering all of the constant data transfer, but if Amazon S3 can handle what we want to do, and for less cost, we may consider using it for Roundup. It would enable us to scale easier and without the added cost of additional servers and infastructure.

The Web Design Industry Is Changing

The web design industry is quickly moving towards this model:

1. Get into the industry, make a load of web sites and become ever more frustrated because managing 50 projects a year is frustrating. Do this for 5 to 10 years until you’re an expert at making web sites.

2. Get sick of that, and begin to brainstorm ideas for making apps and products that will earn residual income. Realize that your value isn’t exclusively in designing and building web sites, but also in providing focused ideas that help your clients succeed online.

3. Start a few of them with mild success, then have the “killer idea” which you spend 1-2 years working on.

4. Launch your killer idea.

5. The last phase is all about doing what you want while the checks roll into your mail box, you’re living off of your residual income.

Only about 2% of web designers ever get past the second phase, which is unfortunate. The web design industry is filled with many bright minds, and with a little bit more momentum, people can do great things.

The good news is that ideas are all around us, and going through all of the experiences in this industry allow us to see new ideas and get ideas for how things can be better. These are the ideas that turn into killer ideas, which turn into residual income.

This post was inspired by a chat with Ward from Mister Shape.