UX/UI certificates and training

ux

Hey guys/gals,

I recently had a discussion on linkedin about a lady who had a few years of UX under her belt and she wanted to add more value and give herself more brand value as a professional. She mentioned taking a 1 week course in UX/UI to get some certificate that she could then add to her list of certificates or degrees. First I want to explain something, you do not need degrees to be the best or give yourself brand power, it obviously helps in some professions but not all (I could not just go build bridges and call myself an engineer because I have a hobby on autocad when I have no theoretical training). I know a few very talented UX/UI designers in San Francisco working with big tech companies, and currently making 6 figures; they do not have college degrees, or any formal training in UX/UI design, these are people who have been in web design their whole life and made the jump over to the usability side (Doing my Darth Vader impression).

So to further elaborate on the subject, I think getting some formal training in anything your excited about is vital to your professional brand power, but don't mistake it as something more then that, do not expect to be picked first or land the best contracts. You need to display hard work with a high level of quality in your portfolio, if your a newbie I suggest creating your own projects ( remake facebook) This will give potential clients or hiring agents better insight to your skill set and offer a fair assessment.

Start working on your own projects to build your brand power now, this will give you valuable content for your empty portfolio,(PS don't show anything you did in school, Barf!). Start doing all the research you can to be the second best UX/UI designer on the planet, this industry is trending in new directions weekly, what is hot now will be old and busted next month. (Pinterest is getting negative buz now). Stay current with your designs, practice your flows from multipul entry points, and user test everything more then once (read my coffee shop post). Don't get caught up on UX software I find it can be cumbersome for people who are learning the foundation of UX/UI, start with a sketch pad and a few common colors(RGB) for your wire-framing. Create your annotations and walk through with Power point of Keynote (I usually code it or user a few other methods, but thats later) this will also provide an area for annotations. Annotations are explanations for your page to users or developers, you will explain rollovers, I frames, anything that would require a new user experience on that page, explain anything that you feel requires a high level explanation.

For all you newer UX/UI hopefuls please don't spend all your money on training, I found hundreds of online resources that are free, don't be lazy, part of being a good UX/UI designer is the ability to research the shit out of anything. Also another big things is to join a community of UX designers, find out where we hang out, and play. Remember to have fun and stop to smell the roses along the way.

User testing at a cafe

So I am sitting at cafe Roma in San Francisco with my IPad product manager, and one of our IOS developers from Hotwire. We are scoping out people to test our New app we created for Hotwire.com. I met a nice lady in line when I was buying a muffin, she is down for testing but wants to eat her breakfast first,(no worries). Cafe testing has it's advantages and disadvantages, the cool part is meeting the users and watching random people use a product I created, it's very fun to watch. The main down fall is qualifying potential users to test on, if you can find your target audience your lucky, but it's just nice to get the product out and get people using it. (20mins later) So we tested two people and they gave us some great feedback, the only main concerns people had was the small details. These small details a not priority for testing unless they are attached to a heavily used framework, if the feature is a stand alone don't focus to heavy on it for prototyping. Give yourself goals for each listening lab, example " lets test the sign up flow" or " let's test the CTA flows", by doing this you will have a focused user testing for frameworks you feel need validation. Don't be shy get out and test your designs any way you can, you will have a way better user experience at the end of the day.

What is a “user experience” and what are the steps to make your current UX kick ass?

What is a “user experience” and what are the steps to make you current UX/UI kick ass?A quick and dirty way to create kick ass UX/UI:UX is a broad term used to explain all aspects of a person’s experience with the web/mobile application including the interface, graphics, industrial design, physical/emotional interactions, and the manual. It is also referring to the application of user-centered design practices to generate cohesive, predictive and desirable designs based on holistic consideration of users’ experience. In most cases, User experience design fully encompasses traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. 

Ok so what the heck does all this even mean? Let me simplify things a bit to make it easier to understand. (Do you see the irony in this?)Essentially we make shit easy to use by collecting data (educated guessing) to predict and decide the user flow of the application for a specific task. Environment strangely enough comes into play also, users have different needs or time constraints with different devices, times of day or location, even mood plays an important role. If I am sitting at home doing nothing but surfing the web on my giant 32 inch monitor, I have nothing but time and I am an easy target so to speak. The problem with this user is nothing at all; in fact 99% of us are this user at some point in a day. Generally we don’t build for these users because they can be satisfied easily, mainly due to the fact they have time to dig around your website to use most of the features. When I am building a new experience for a client or with my own projects, I take the following steps to get me ready and focused for the challenges I will be facing.

1) Ask a ton of questions to the client (product managers, or CTO types usually). What should you ask? My typical top 5 a) What is your target demographic, this is usually number one.b) What is your current design flow, and at what point are people “bouncing “off. c) Do you have any new plans for a new business direction, focus or strategy that might complicate the current or new flow, if so this needs to be broken down to fit the new interaction design of the site.d) Are you planning a mobile/tablet strategy? Not in place yet? If so discuss if it’s worth building the App first.e) What are the time/technical/financial constraints?

2) Now that we know the top 5 directional questions let’s begin and start to reverse “engineer” the competition, what? Engineer? Yeah, find all the competitors and make a simple diagram (pen and paper or you can get fancy) show all the feature sets for each competitor product, this will allow you to see the differences between all your competitors at one time. Also take screen shots of any interesting or cool flows or design from competitors’ sites. Turn all this into something a little more tangible by making a flow map for each site, nothing fancy just quick and dirty. To get a solid understanding of the users entry points, enter every site you visit or love from multiple points of entry, note the experience you had from 1-5 and document how you might do things differently and why. Don’t get too crazy with the entry experience, remember less is more sometimes. Once you have figured out what everyone is doing and why they do things the way they do, you’re ready to put foot to ass.(Flow map is major point of entry to the site, all the way to “call to action”)

3) So let’s review real quick, you talked over the site/app requirements with team members, you know all the demographic, direction and expectations at this point. You know the completion better then they know themselves(this is a vital component, any good solder will tell to know your enemy better then you friends) make sure your ammo is full before you go any further, if you’re having problems finding main competitors learn to use Google better and/or ask the team members. No such thing as stupid questions, just stupid answers…or people, or both… Let’s move on with the UX boot camp.

4) I want you to review the current site/app you’re working on, enter the site every way possible note your experience 1-5 and what needs to change and why. Also make sure you sign-up if needed and/or follow the CTA flow, see where it’s getting difficult, boring (lots of words) or places you think users will drop off. Make a comparison chart, highlight your site, and put it up against all the other sites (competition) how are things looking? Can you see gaps in the sites current flow when comparing it? Drop offs? Things you’re doing better or worse at? Now you can see the light (Aha! moment), let’s start building our new and improved site.

5)  My first steps are to get a standard HB pencil, some blank, white computer paper and some small post it notes and start drawing flows, Crazy hu, you thought about using tools really technical I bet. For now it’s best not to get caught up with time constraints of technology, besides your design will change minute to minute this is major brainstorming we’re doing here people (PS, if you can’t draw don’t worry you’re not presenting this to clients or users, it’s purely for internal usage, it’s just faster and allows you to loosen up and get dirty). Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and challenge yourself or other rules; this is what makes us UX designers “interesting” people. Use the post-it notes to perfect your annotations for user and site interactions page by page, the post it notes are great because you can move them around without re-writing or ruining your mock-ups. Now that you have something prototyped I am sure you can see the funnel that this little exercise has taken you down, you’re on your way to your first web user experience design; take a breath and give yourself a high five (don’t let anyone see you they will think you’re crazy, trust me..

6) Now, the flow is in good shape and it makes sense from multiple entry points, CTA’s and pattern frameworks. I want you to count how many button clicks a user would take to get them to buy, sign up or do the thing your site wants users to do (CTA), 3-4 clicks is average, more is fine as long as the user feels progress and accomplishment, don’t leave them hanging. Do not make this process long, try to eliminate as much sign up or user text fields as possible, find a good integration tool if needed (FB connect or something), 3rd party sign up/in tools are awesome, it unlocks so much social power for your site and its dead easy to use, but this might not be an option for you if you need SSL options; just do your research before you decide.
Let’s create real mid- high fidelity mock-ups. Notice how we just skipped wire framing, we basically already did this with the drawing and annotations, and why do it again? Just to show people you know how to make boxes and layouts on a fancy web tool? Skip this please, try to never make computer based wireframes this is old and cumbersome method and needs to be abolished. If you disagree that is fine, but time is money; remember that when you’re a scrappy start up with only 200K in working capital.

7) Choose your favorite graphics editor, mine is Fireworks and Photoshop, they have wicked powers to export/create HTML, CSS…and can make vector art (fireworks) if you have no experience with these tools grab a coffee and please visit http://tv.adobe.com/ I have spent hours of my life here. Make sure to use proper naming when creating layers; it will make your life easier down the road. Also lets use our own common sense and try to build our prototype graphics in the right dimensions for the web or application you building, please don’t build small graphics, building bigger and scaling down is fine.  Don’t get caught up on heavy eye candy graphics just yet, we don’t want the user to get mixed up and judge the comps based on UI design, make note of this early to the user . I am not going to tell you how to set up your page in Photoshop or Fireworks; everyone has their own comfortable format for guide lines and so on. Turn on a few of the “stick to grid”, edge or pixel or what have you, also get friendly with layer comps in Photoshop and in Fireworks, please Google “layer comps” to really understand this tool, but in a nut shell this cool feature will allow you to turn off certain layers and turn on certain layers as a group to mimic different webpages the user is on, this is fast for seeing how your flows are developing, without wasting time turning a million different eye balls off and on… When saving your work remember to save for web and devices, or another good way is PNG with transparent BG. Now let’s build click-able comps to show our clients and maybe some test subjects for user feedback.

8)      If you’re an HTML, CSS guru go ahead and make these comps clickable in 5 times the amount of time it will take me. The time you’re done coding the comps I will have built a full interactive prototype, tested it out and started making my revisions.(trust me I have had races with some fast coders). As long as the tools you choose to create prototypes with works and it simulates the sites navigation the way you planed it, use whatever method you want. I like to use Keynote (power point for windows) for interactive PDF web prototypes, and Proto.io for mobile and tablet, also check out keynotopia, the web is full of prototyping tools so don’t worry. Now that our done building for now, the client can play with the interactive comps on his/her computer, IPhone or tablet and really get a feel for what is coming, at this point we can see life in our design, and see where people will get stuck or drop off, this gives us the chance to revise our flow.

9)      Once you have built a few iterations of the site or app, now do a fun A/B/C test on a few people that are the current demographic. Ask friends, family, co-workers not in design or programing to test out your prototype, find the ones who don’t use tech much as I find they make the best test subjects. My philosophy is if a 5 year old can use your site, anyone can. When testing the site, don’t set the users up with queued navigation, let them figure things out, take notes and only assist or give a caveat when needed. Now that we tested the shit out of the flows, let’s go back to the drawing board and look through all the notes you took while the users tested your site. Now we can start looking at ways to improve your existing pattern framework, find all the kinks you can before it is shipped of for development, this will save time, money and all of the above.

10)   Test the flows again on some innocent bystanders, I would at times ask people on the bus, they are usually willing participants; just don’t ask in the morning. You should have a very refined product at this point, it should look good and feel good with no dead ends, sticky spots or confusing UI design (icons) be clear with all design elements, do not assume anything. Some simple things to remember1) Icons are cool please don’t beat them to death2) Try not to copy design trends (pinterest) they don’t last and you don’t stand out3) Colours are nice but let’s not build a rainbow website, build a nice colour wheel4) Header nav bars are still ok, but pull down menus are not, period…5) Font size and styles are fun but let’s keep things consistent 6) Contact info is a must on a site, please don’t just have a submit question form7) Footer styling is cool but serves no purpose; more than half your viewers will never see it.8) Position your search bar and social sharing options above the fold and not in footer.9) Make sure all your important CTA content is above the fold of majority of web browsers.10) Test it, re-build it, test it again, don’t fall in love with your work and learn to take criticism even when you think you know everything. 

Save all your designs and graphics in the right format (PNG, GIF, JPG) and get them ready in a folder with some named subfolders to separate graphical elements like icons and logos, Complex headers or footers…etc, learn to be organized with your work. Place all the web page graphics in different folders, remember you don’t need to repeat or save multiple graphics, your developer will be re-using them, but make sure you have design maps for each page with annotations, and text or copy, with Font size, font type, and colour. If you’re a CSS or HTLM guy, you can get the majority of the front end stuff completed and had over your files to the developers. 

And remember how lucky we are to actually get paid for doing this stuff....ride the bubble...

16-Year-Old Programmer Raises Seed Round From Billionaire Li Ka Shing To ‘Summarize The Web’

Launching today on the App Store is a new application called Summly that, in short, attempts to summarize the Web. The app was formerly known as Trimit (which we covered back in July), before Founder (and 16-year-old programmer) Nick D’Aloisio raised a seed round from billionaire Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing and his investment vehicle, Horizons Ventures.

Horizons encouraged D’Aloisio to change his startup’s name to “Summly Limited”, which he has done, all in tune to what we are hearing is a sum of money that’s over $250K, which the startup will use to ramp up hiring, for development, and creating patents. At the very least, it’s a lot of money for a 16-year-old. Do you remember what you were doing at 16? Likelihood is it wasn’t raising seed funding from the world’s billionaires. (I was just learning to tie my shoes.)

So what is this Summly app that everyone’s so excited about? Well, in July, I wrote that the value proposition for Trimit was that its web and iOS apps allowed you “to condense content into 1,000, 500, or 140-character summaries. Essentially, Trimit was a text auto summarizer designed to fit all those things you’re reading on a mobile device into concise synopses and share those over SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter in .txt form — all with a few clicks”.

Today, the guy that Om calls “the Internet’s new boy genius” has used his new money to enlist the service of veteran programmers to built out the initial architecture around his genetic programming and AI-based tool that he says, “mimics evolution”.

It does this because, as the 16-year-old says, the Web is overloaded with content (I like to think I’ve in some small way contributed to that), so Summly offers the world a simpler browsing and search experience by summarizing content into bite-sized chunks to make it easier to consume.

And it seems to be working. Researchers at MIT, D’Aloisio tells us, have tested Summly’s patent-pending technology and have found that it outperforms the “highest academically published results” by a factor of 30 percent.

Why? According to the founder, Summly’s algorithm is able to instantly analyze text and automatically distill it into digestible chunks, doing so as you browse and surf the Web, providing succinct summaries of search results, articles, and Web pages. D’Aloisio was a little more hesitant this time around to discuss the secret sauce that makes his new app tick, but for a glimpse, see our previous post on Trimit to get a sense of what’s behind the app — and how it works in practice.

Sean Parker And Shervin Pishevar At Le Web: “If You Don’t Fail, You Haven’t Tried Hard Enough”

Last week at Le Web, Alexia interviewed Sean Parker and Shervin Pishevar onstage in what turned out to be one of the most-buzzed about sessions. Here is the full video for your weekend watching pleasure. It’s a great discussion that ranges across the state of startups, venture capital, music, and politics .

Parker bemoans the surplus of venture capital for its effect of diluting the talent in the tech industry, a point he’s made before. “It prevents the aggregation of talent around great ideas,” he says. He emphasizes the need for a great team from the get-go. “People are the greatest asset class,” Pishevar agrees.

The conversation quickly turns to Gowalla, which recently was acquired by Facebook, and why it failed to take on Foursquare. “If you don’t fail, you haven’t tried hard enough,” says Pishevar. He warns against “success amnesia.” Behind every great success there are failures. Learn from them. ”The product was too similar to Foursquare,” says Parker, noting the obvious. He thinks that “there were things they could have done,” which he suggested to the team at the time, but “they did not want to consider alternatives.” Both however say they are happy with the outcome (Parker is a big Facebook shareholder).

Speaking about his own failures, Parker says, “We failed with Napster to build a legal licensing model. As a result, we watched the industry we loved collapse.” But “the biggest failure we made there was hiring. We built the wrong team.” He warns that when you have a startup with a lot of hype, “it inevitably attracts a certain breed of parasitic leech that if you do make the mistake of hiring, you have to realize your mistake quickly and eradicate it like you would any kind of insect.”

The Art of Raising Venture Capital

These videos are my recent attempt to explain the art of raising venture capital. They are part of the Montgomery & Hansen online learning site and conference. For example, to learn about financing agreements and the term-sheet process.

Zuckerbergs Facebook Photo Hack

Pictures showed Mr Zuckerberg and his girlfriend cooking A series of private pictures of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have been posted online by "hackers" to highlight a bug in the social network.

In total 14 pictures of Mr Zuckerberg were posted to image site Imgur under the headline: "It's time to fix those security flaws Facebook".

The bug related to tools designed to allow users to report inappropriate images.

Facebook said that it had fixed the glitch.
Privacy

Mr Zuckerberg and... a chicken

"Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously," the firm said in a statement.

"The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user's most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos.

"This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed," the statement read.

The BBC asked Facebook's permission before publishing the photographs of Mr Zuckerberg. The firm said that as the pictures were now in the public domain it would not be pursuing copyright infringement claims.
Loophole
The bug was discovered by members of a bodybuilding forum who went on to post step-by-step instructions on how to view private photos.

When users reported a public profile picture of someone as inappropriate, they were invited by Facebook to view more of the person's pictures to look for similar content. The thumbnails shown to them were easy to enlarge and download.

The "hackers" used the loophole to break into Mr Zuckerberg's pages, as the most high profile member of Facebook's 850 million users.

The images of Mr Zuckerberg included shots of him preparing food with his girlfriend, holding a chicken by the leg and meeting US President Barack Obama.

The embarrassing incident comes a week after the Federal Trade Commission slammed changes made to Facebook's privacy settings two years ago. It accused the social network of deceptive practices and demanded it subject itself to regular audits over the next 20 years.

Facebook special

The BBC did an hour-long special on Facebook, including interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, as well as cameos by Ron Conway, David Kirkpatrick, and others. The entire video is now on Youtube. Update: Well, that was fast. One version’s been pulled down, but more are popping up

Technology, needs help, to help

Where do I begin, Social media has
evolved so much in the last 2 years, sites like Facebook and Twitter
have become that main power houses in social media and news feeds.
Groupon and Livingsocial have dominated the group buying explosion
that is now on the decline.

Netflix was the cool kid on the
block just 12 months ago, now other rivals (notably Blockbuster’s new
business model) have been popping up to compete with Netflix in the
streaming video market.

And a ton of stuff has been developing
with payments and mobile(Do not even get me started on NFC technology
and how it is the worst idea for mobile payments)…..the world will
be lost online if we continue at this rate. I think we are definitely
traveling in the right direction, but I think we are all moving a
little to fast. With all the competition with “Start ups” and
trying to get the newest, best web idea, or patent, I think its all
kind of stupid. Essentially it’s a tech race and nobody cares if you
win, nobody that’s normal anyway. When I say normal I mean the
general population of common folk that have no idea what “tweeting”
or “ Like” or the expression “it’s in the cloud” without
making them look up, and what it really means.

The other people who are living in
silicon valley who live and breath technology are all rolling around
with a chubby when you mention the words “term sheet”, “social
media”, “cloud based tech” or “pitch”. It’s actually very
amusing to look in on a different perspective, It’s just the internet. What if one day
something tragic happens and we lose the satellites for the web? and
Cell phones? holy shit I would love to see this day, I want to see
the look on Zuckbergs face when his stock crashes.( only joking, I would be just as upset)

I have had the opportunity to attend
many technology conventions and have met with some very high profile
founders and VC, and I must say I am impressed with the energy and
the general aptitude of the attendees, but I start thinking, how on
earth are normal people going to figure out how to use this website/app
that I just seen being pitched? It’s great that a VC just dumped
millions of dollars into the idea but we almost need a professional
liaison between these website inventors and the general population.
Basically someone to say “this idea is good and normal people will
adopt it quickly” or “ You need to get back into your delorean
with Doc. Brown, mick-fly”

So I think we are almost at a cross
road with the internet and technology, do we continue to build and
change before adoption or do we slow down and wait for the rest of
the world to catch up? Very debatable, but I think it would be smart
to wait, continue to build but the primary building focus should be
on education of all the widely used websites and technology. Create a
learning platform for all these websites, a place that everyday
people can visit and learn(like a fun website for just social media
learning), this would not only create a better feature testing
demographic but this would also create a long term user, and more
users that are confident and will embraces your next big thing.

Facebook will only survive another 3
years if it continues to change its user interface monthly for advertising usage, I 
know people who have no idea what to do on their profile the last
time FB was re-designed. I understand the whole, “got to stay a
head of the curve” but Facebook is already around the block and not
looking back. I still think another website will come along and be a
Facebook killer, I think it will be an App that is simple but 
the same idea as Facebook, a newer concept or it might even be like
facebook but with a better user experience, less intimidating and can
virtually cater to every persons technological  aptitude. Facebook UX/UI is dictated by its adversing needs, they are constantly thinking of ways to "engage" users to give up more info via "new improved" features that need more info... like that stupid timeline, who was the engineer who thought of that? Why on earth would I want my wife to see pictures of me and my ex-girlfriend from 10 years ago? just trying to start shit FB. Maybe slow down and work on UX for a few months.....

Facebook has so many options, and apps,
and a bunch of garbage on it. I think its turning into a wasteland of
personal information that is being picked apart like vultures by big
media companies looking to make millions off ads and your personal
info.

Twitter is a wasteland of “Robot
Tweets”, try going on twitter throughout the day about 6 times and
just have a look at the tweets, you will notice a trend of tweets by
the same people, these people are using an automated system to
deliver their message.

Just one problem, if everyone is
automating their Tweets to each other, then who is really seeing
them? Twitter records millions of Tweets, I would love to see the
actual analytics and compare it to the actual tweets to people logged on the
site. I bet you would see a huge number difference, meaning Yes
tweets are getting out but no one is actually see them, Yay great
website…..to end this problem, Twitter should be stopping
automation of Tweets, but they realize if they do this the number of
Tweets will drop dramatically and therefore decrease the value of
Twitter and all the VC will be pissed and lose money. Basically
twitter has built a fake valuation, and fake business on automation,
not the most practical long term solution. It’s to bad, this website
concept has the most power to reach the people.

And finally Groupon……need I say
anymore, oh wait yeah, R.I.P

Cheers,

Your start up, Transaction Vs subscription model

In the startup world, subscription revenue is sexy. Entrepreneurs and investors love subscription revenue (also referred to as recurring revenue) because of its predictable nature. Startups with such revenue models essentially are striving to be annuity businesses: each customer signed up is an incremental lifetime monthly cash flow (with the caveat that churn rates are zero and renewal rates are 100% in this perfect world).

David Skok’s series of blogs on SaaS economics (Software-as-a-Service companies are inherently subscription businesses) contain several analyses on the high profit potential of startups with recurring monthly revenues. Apple/Google recently announced subscription-pricing capabilities for app developers as an alternative to ads-based or one-time transaction-based pricing models, we saw Rentjuice.com as an example of a startup that pivoted away from per-transaction pricing to subscription pricing. It seems that recurring revenue models are popping up everywhere in the digital world.

So is subscription revenue really the Holy Grail for profitability? Why don’t more startups  join the party? Why aren’t all subscription startups wildly successful? A few thoughts...

Subscriptions require patience (and a leap of faith)

Imagine you could charge your customers $20 on a monthly base or charge them .50 cents per transaction. What would you choose? and why? I would choose both. My reason for this motion is
1) You would need to charge a transaction fee to cover your cost (If applicable to your business)

2) The monthly sub fee adds value to your service; by offering a purely transaction based model your actually de-valuing your business model. Same problem if you price your services to low nobody will take your business seriously. (view your competitions rev model, and also look at other successful sites in your market)

3) Transaction based models work great for payment services(Paypal), or high volume sales(Ebay). But if your relying only on transaction sales in todays market of innovation and competition your business could be in trouble at the worst time of your new company, right when your trying to grow.  Reason for this amber alert, You are placing your entire business in the hands of transactions, and not sign ups. Lets say you have 100,000 users that hardly sell anything, chances are your business will not be around much longer unless your revenue includes advertising and you have a ton of traffic, but if you have 100,000 users that pay a monthly fee of $20, your a millionaire every month.

4) Subscription based models qualify your customers or users, if a potentially new user signs up for a trial and sees no value after the trial and will not pay $20/mth, this customer is classified as "low profile" and does not think they could make a big enough return to pay the $20/mth. (Possible other objectives, UX,UI problems).



Subscription pricing is tricky

Recurring revenue looks great in the Excel model, but the trick is determining the price for which customers are willing to subscribe for your product to create a frictionless sign up process. Ning, a web-based platform for building social websites, began as a traditional freemium model that let users access basic services for free and then have the option to upgrade services for $20 a month. The freemium model was not working so Ning got rid of the free product and introduced several pricing options ranging from $3 a month to $50 per month - resulting in doubling conversation rates and tripling the base of it paying users. Ning’s first attempt at a subscription business was not successful, but it had raised sufficient capital to survive this mistake and buy time to test different subscription price points that worked better.
I would choose both if I could, I am not a double dipper but high sales would essentually not cover the subscription fees causing us to absorb the trans fees. Again, if applicable to your model.

Subscriptions are relationships



When people subscribe to a product and agree to send money to a business on a recurring basis - a relationship is established (rather than just a transaction). There is a customer service element that requires higher touch of support for paid subscription relationships. Netflix is exemplary with its proactive approach: if there is an interruption in the Netflix feed when you stream content - customers automatically (and quickly) receive an apology email that informs them they will get a 2% credit on their next bill for the inconvenience. However, startups often have to skimp on post-sales support, considering higher priority is usually given to the product and sales teams.

I expect an increasing percentage of startups to adopt subscription revenue models though I suspect startups with ample funding will be more successful in executing these models given the resources needed to wait out the payback period, figure out pricing, and maintain good customer support.

Groupon, is it worth it for your busniess

Why Groupon and discount coupon websites like this will hurt your business and possibly ruin your customer base.


We have all herd about these discount and coupon websites delivering the “deal of the day” and it is basically 50-80% off the original price. I get excited when I see these “deals” who wouldn't? the idea has been out in the public and in the market place now for months now and businesses are now talking about their experiences with using these sites to market and sell their coupons.

The verdicts are out and these people are not very happy, oh yeah and broke. So lets get this straight, Groupon will sell the coupons for your business online for you....ok good. And they will do all the advertising and marketing.....even better. But wait this sounds to good to be true where is the catch and how will Groupon make money? they will take 50% of your profits, so wait a minute.....I have to discount my product or service 50% off and then Groupon is going to take 50% from my “profits”........Where is the money for my business?

“ $46,320 of merchandise at retail or roughly $23,160 at cost…of that I get around $10,000 because of course I only get 50% of the deal minus credit card fees (ugh!) Groupon gets their 50%.” Kim, Owner of a parent teacher store

“There came a time when we literally couldn’t not make payroll because at that point in time we had lost nearly $8,000 with our Groupon campaign. We literally had to take $8,000 out of our personal savings to cover payroll and rent that month”. Jessie Burke, Owner of Coffee shop in Portland

“with sales of around 300,000 Groupons, Gap lost $7.5 million in revenue on the pay $25-get-$50 coupon deal.” Gap

So when do I get paid for all the items that where sold on Groupon?. Well glad you asked, Groupon pays you in 3 installments during the Groupon life cycle, could be months until you see any money.

So this Groupon website is making 50% of your profits after its been heavily discounted? They kinda sound like the mob back in the 50's, except they are providing marketing/advertising not protection for your business. From my understanding of online businesses and how they work, the over head is relatively low, you might have sales people that work off commission, or possibly an administrative person answering the phone for customer service, but typically the over head is very minor. So why dose Groupon think they need 50% of your money? Sounds like greed to me and a bad business plan, mixed in with bad intentions. They are not helping the economy in any way, just because people are buying and spending their money dose not mean the economy is picking up or “rebounding”.

These websites, I’m sure they will move a lot of product but are they cannibalizing their target market, acquiring unprofitable customers and training them to look for the deal? This is business 101 do not do.

I say if your a smart business owner, please do not fall for this hype. Do not encourage these websites and they will disappear, no businesses to offer coupons= No Groupon or website like them. Their are plenty of other ways that will cost you less and provide less of a headaches from customers that take advantage by getting mad because you will not honor a day old coupon.....

Check this out

Benefits of Registering in an Online Business Directory

Summary:AndyDicosta
Getting your company registered in an on-line business directory increases your chances of getting noticed in the marketplace. With Internet being the most-widely used communication medium for businesses, registering in an online business directory can be increasingly beneficial to the local businesses as well.



With economy rapidly escalating, every business man wishes that his or her business also prospers and soars higher. To achieve this, people employ different strategies. While some people believe in distributing pamphlets, cards and opt for other promotional services and products, some businesses merely get them registered in a good online business directory.



The main advantages of getting registered in an online business directory are:



• It endows you with high-visibility as opposed to your competitors who may still believe in traditional methods to promote their business like yellow pages and newspapers.



• It helps build up relationships with buyers, customers and clients



• You can even attract buyers of competitors, as your company will be much more visible and updated.



• You can always be in the mind of your customers by launching special coupons and special promotional campaigns.



• There are no limitations in terms of quality of the content that you can incorporate in the business directory.



• You can even upload product pictures, menu and service records together with business URL.



• You can even insert your business directory’s website on your business cards, which will make it easy for customers to approach you.



• You could even keep potential customers updated on new products, business hours, special hours and discounts.



• A business directory reportedly submits your company’s internet page to other search engine sites as well and this helps attract and grow traffic.



• As more and more customers are accessing the internet to satisfy their requirements, it becomes easy to locate your company and seek services if you have registered in an online business directory.



The most remarkable aspect of online business directories is that your business will keep progressing sans any glitches, as you will come in contact with large customers, both from India and the outside world. And be rest assured once you get your self registered in an online business directory, your sales will climb up immensely and you can look forward to catering to the needs of your clients in a proper fashion.

Benefits of Registering in an Online Business Directory Originally published in Shvoong: http://www.shvoong.com/business-management/international-business/1966355-benefits-registering-online-business-directory/

I will let you know if this works

Hey everyone I am just testing this new method to get a high index

50 Cool Websites you must see

You have not lived unless you have seen these website.

I hate when this happens

close call buddy

Top 10 Websites to make you think

I was reading for hours......what day is it?

Top 15 Durex Condom Ads ever.

This is a must see, Very funny but rated +18 check it out.