Marcelo Calbucci

A 10% improvement on conversion with one change

Marcelo Calbucci — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:52:37 GMT

If you look back at the Sampa sign up form, it has been through 4 or 5 different versions. At one point we asked you about 15 questions. Then we worked with one local UX expert to simplify a bit, then we worked with a Portland-based UX firm to simplify it even more and we had just 8 inputs:

Name
Email
Confirmation of email
Password
Confirmation of password
Agree to Terms of use
Web address
CAPTCHA

After reading the book "Web Form Design Fillin in the Blanks" (by Luke Wroblewski) over the 4th of July, I decided to take a closer look at our sign up form again.

I am always afraid of making any change to our sign up pipeline since we have such fantastic conversion rates that is easy to assume something, make a change and it to backfire.

Well, there was at least one change I've made that was a no-brainer. The Terms of Use checkbox wasn't checked by default and I changed that.

But that's not the interesting part. On the book, Luke mentions that a lot of the things we ask on forms are limitations of the application itself and that it doesn't add value to the customer ("inside out").

You can clearly see some of that on Sampa. Why do we ask twice for your email? Why do we ask twice for your password? Why do we need your name? Why do we need CAPTCHA?

We have good answers for all of the above, and we A/B tested several scenarios over the last 2 years to know that we are close to the right combination that yields maximum conversion and retention. But one piece was never tested and it was off: CAPTCHA.

Why do we need CAPTCHA? Like any other free web service that you sign up to (Hotmail, GMail, Ticket Master, Blogger, etc.) CAPTCHA is necessary to prevent automated bots from creating hundreds or thousands of fake accounts, either for Spam or Link Farm. So it's a necessary evil that good people have to go through so we can keep the bad people out, or is it?

Well, last Monday at 5:13 PM we removed CAPTCHA from Sampa. It wasn't easy and clean, but we created a set of tests and rules that will make us not display a CAPTCHA about 99% of the time. I can't really disclose the tests we make since that's the secret you want to keep out of the hands of bot creators.

The result: 9.2% improvement on our conversion rate!

The entire team is just shocked that such a huge percentage of users wanted to sign up to Sampa and either didn't pass the CAPTCHA (less likely) or found the form more intimidating with a CAPTCHA (more likely). The third explanation which we've been talking about is that with less vertical space, the "Continue" button is above the fold more often and give users a better sense of how short this form is.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

What's best: JSON / AJAX / AJAH / in-page?

Marcelo Calbucci — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:22:36 GMT

[Geek alert: this is for geeks only]

When I started Sampa, I thought that most content would be traditional page GET/POST. But then I went back and checked a family tree that I did for my personal site in 2000 that used AJAX. It made sense to use that technology on Sampa and I went overboard. I created my own AJAX framework (in 2005 there wasn't anything solid that I could use) and used AJAX everywhere on the system.

Later AJAX started to become a pain, because a page after being loaded required 3 or 4 AJAX calls to get the additional content. Bad design for the user. The good part is that Sampa used a combination of Frames that allowed us to cache content on the browser, so the AJAX calls to the server were minimized.

From a development standpoint, AJAX is a pain because it requires you to parse the returning XML and do something with it, usually generate some HTML or data structure. This is where AJAH and JSON come in hand.

If you need a piece of HTML to sitck on the middle of the page, you can generate that HTML on the server and send it on an AJAH call. Once you get that is just a matter of setting the innerHTML on an element.

JSON does the same thing, but for data structures and its data in Javascript. Get a JSON response, eval-it, and you have data and 'classes' ready for use, instead of parsing the XML and putting into a data structure.

So, of the 4 technologies above (in-page, AJAX, AJAH, JSON) which one should you be using on your web-based service? All of them! Each one solves a different problem and they need to be used in combination.

This is my non-comprehensive list of tips on those technologies:

in-page: Use that to minimize server calls when the page is first loaded. The same way you should have few CSS, JS and Images file on a page, you should try not to make any JSON, AJAX or AJAH call once the page is loaded at the first time. Everything should be embedded on the HTML you send to the user.
AJAX: Great to take action on the server ("delete this record") without needing to refresh the page, or when you need pagination ("contacts 1-50 of 1750").
AJAH: When the HTML generated is smaller (or faster) than sending an AJAX response and creating the HTML in Javascript. It's also good because you can keep all the HTML generation routines on the server. Like AJAX, you should only use it when you can't have the content embeded on the page directly on the first page request to the server.
JSON: When the results of an AJAX call will be parsed into a data structure, you probably should consider JSON. Size of the response and parsing time are important considerations. Remember "eval" can be very very very very (add 17 more 'very') expensive at runtime. You don't want your user's browser freezing every time it clicks on something.
I'm a big advocate of using 1 or 2 letters field names. Instead of "Username" just use "n", and that goes both to JSON and AJAX. Put the comment on the code to what it means, but save a lot on response size.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Another busy networking time

Marcelo Calbucci — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:27:51 GMT

It's that time of the ~~year~~ month again. Tons of networking event and I plan on being at many of those. Here's where I'm going over the next few days:

Wednesday (9th) 7PM: Seattle Tech Startup meeting at UW
Saturday (12th) 7PM: Mashable's SummerMash at Showbox SoDo
Tuesday (15th) 6PM: nPost Networking at Columbia City Theater
Thursday (17th) 5PM: WTIA Summer Celebration at Pyramid Alehouse

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Sampa 4th Employee: Dave Sampson

Marcelo Calbucci — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:38:59 GMT

It has been just a few days, but Dave Sampson is already making his mark on Sampa as VP of Marketing. Dave is a convert. He started as a techie and moved into marketing, which is just the kind of person we were looking for.

The VP of Marketing at Sampa was the position that was open the longest, probably since I started Sampa in 2005.

You can read more about him on our Leadership page, on LinkedIn or watch one of his lecturers at the University of Washington where he teaches Marketing on the Software Product Management Certificate program.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Has anyone developed a Billing System?

Marcelo Calbucci — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:40:40 GMT

We plan on shipping a billing system for Sampa some time between now and the end of times. I've never done this before and as far as I know there is a lot of little details.

I'm looking to borrow a developer's brain that has done a billing system for their startup recently. Anyone is interested in coffee or lunch (I pay) to tell me about the dirty side of building a billing system?

Please, contact me at marcelo@sampa.com.

Sorry for being picky about it, but I'm not interested in business people or program managers. I really want a developer that got his/her hands dirty defining the schema, doing the API, testing it, etc.

Also, Sampa is not e-commerce type of billing (one time transaction). We (will) have a subscription model, so I care about startups that have similar models.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Are you getting bounced messages from me?

Marcelo Calbucci — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:10:22 GMT

    I'm trying to hunt down a problem where some people are complaining that some email messages sent to me are bouncing. If you sent me an email on the last 3 days and it bounced, would you mind forwarding the bounced message to mcalbucci@hotmail.com?

    Preferably, attach the message to a new message, but if you don't know how to do that just forward me the bounce message.

    If you want to go one step further, send me an email with the subject "Email Test" and I'll reply with "got it". If you get a bounce send it to me, if you don't get a reply in a couple of hours send a message to mcalbucci@hotmail.com.

    Thanks.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Extreme Makeover, Web Edition

Marcelo Calbucci — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:06:34 GMT

Tomorrow at 6PM, Roy Leban, Sampa's Director of User Experience will talk about the redesign of the Sampa service that we worked from November until the official launch in the end of March.

Come to StartPad and learn what it takes to chop the head of a Web product gone wrong and starting from scratch.

What: StartPad Countdown 7 - Extreme Makeover, Web Edition

When: 6 PM, Tuesday, June 24th 2008

Where: StartPad offices - 811 First Avenue, Suite 480, Seattle.

Price: Free (Pizza and drinks will be served)

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Sampa is not like other Windows startup

Marcelo Calbucci — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:23:37 GMT

Since we are interviewing so many candidates I thought I explain a bit of a strange statement that I usually make and it appears on our job's page:

"Sampa is built with C#/.NET but not ASP.NET"

That wouldn't be strange at all if Sampa was creating a client software that you download, but we are not. We are doing server-side development for a Web-based product. So, how is it possible that we are not using ASP.NET?

First, let me explain that Sampa has two big customer facing parts: The Sampa.com website and the customer's site.

Sampa.com is a marketing site to "sell" Sampa to users. It contains almost no intelligence, being made mostly of static content. The only part of the site that has "intelligence" is the signup/account system. So, Sampa.com is done using ASP.NET (hence the *.aspx pages) and has a SQL Server backend. Very simple and straighforward.

However, when a customer creates a site with Sampa, she's sent to the "Sampa Site Web Server", that is where our product really lives. That service is where most of our development work goes and is developed with C#, .NET, JavaScript and static conent (HTML, CSS, etc.), but *not* ASP.NET.

Again, for most people that is a bit absurd. Can you have a .NET application running your webserver that is not based on ASP.NET? Yes, you can! (trademark by Barack Obama).

ASP.NET is a mix and mesh of multiple parts. When people talk about ASP.NET, mostly they are talking about server controls, ASPX engine and many goodies that make ASP.NET the perfect choice for many sites. But Sampa has some serious perf requirements and from previous experience on MSN, I know the right way to implement Sampa would be to not use those ASP.NET facilities. And that's what we did.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

A new logo for the Seattle 2.0 blog

Marcelo Calbucci — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:39:59 GMT

Check out the new logo for the Seattle 2.0 blog. Let me know what you think.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

How do I get approved for Google Ad Manager?

Marcelo Calbucci — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:24:29 GMT

I applied to use Google Ad Manager last week but haven't heard back from them yet. Does anyone has a contact that I can use?

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Why I'm not excited about Firefox 3

Marcelo Calbucci — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:50:11 GMT

There has been a lot of chatting today about the release of Firefox 3. I was absolutely not looking forward to that, the same way that I'm not looking forward to Internet Explorer 8.

The reason is simple: One more browser platform for me to have to test Sampa with.

We support IE 6, IE 7 and FF 2. Now with FF 3, as soon as it reaches a couple percentage points of penetration (which should happen in a month or so) we will need to support it as well, but we won't be able to drop FF 2 support either because a large percentage of our customers are still using it.

Now, look forward a few months and Sampa will have to be compatible with IE 6, IE 7, IE 8, FF 2 and FF 3. Maybe we'll add Safari to the mix.

The problem rises from the fact that each new version fixes previous bugs that we had to work around to make sure Sampa worked well on those browsers. Now, these workarounds might break on the new version of the browser. What's a developer to do?

In fact, there is absolutely no actionable item that I (or any other engineer) can take to fix this mess. That's one of the reasons Web 1.0 was full of crappy web solutions, because there were too many incompatible browsers (aka, platforms) and the cost of supporting most of them were just too high.

I don't wish Mozilla would take back FF3, but I wish they've focused this version in improving perf, stability and fixing tons of known bugs, instead of adding features. Then, when they move to add new features, they are working on top of a stable platform.

My conclusion is that Flash and Silverlight will win the "Web war" this time around, simply because they are more compatible across OSes, across browsers and across their own versions.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Why Americans are so tolerant of violence?

Marcelo Calbucci — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:43:00 GMT

Yesterday watching the NBA finals with my son, I thought we would have a great time since he’s two-years old and loves basketball (and soccer, and golf, and baseball, …), but instead, I was on stress mode on every interval and timeout.

Sports are considered TV-G, which means that anyone of any age can watch, but the commercials during the interval are just insanely violent. From what I can recall, there was a guy run over by a car (for a series on ABC), a Playstation 3 war game ad, and countless other ads where the content was absolutely not TV-G.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love violent movies and violent video games, and I do know everything my son’s watch on TV (and I watch with him), but commercials for adult products on a family show are just wrong. I much rather my son see sexy girls making out or non-nipple display on the Super Bowl than people shooting each other.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Recruiters, do call!

Marcelo Calbucci — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:42:00 GMT

[UPDATE] I've got too many emails. Please, I'm only going to talk with *local* recruiters (Seattle and vicinity) and don't send me your standard cold-call boiler plate, at least do some work and look at what Sampa does and what we are looking for at our jobs page.

We are looking for a Recruiting service to help us fill out some technical positions. Mostly, we are looking for a senior .NET developer and a VP of Engineering that is also a coder to begin with. If you are a recruiter and specializes in startup and technical positions, do contact me at marcelo@sampa.com.

We want to work with local (Seattle-based) recruiting firms that will not charge an arm and a leg (we are a startup!).

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Upgrading Sampa users 1 at a time

Marcelo Calbucci — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:27:00 GMT

About a month ago we released a new feature that allows users to upgrade their Sampa site from version 1 to version 2. Instead of letting all users do at once just to find out some small bug was causing some sites to lose all data, we took a very slow approach.

Basically, we created about 10 knobs to control which users would be displayed the option to upgrade. The knobs include things like number of blogs, number of photo albums, number of pages, etc.

We started slowly, found some bugs, fixed it, and kept increasing those knobs. They are still not at 100%, and we expect to take another month or so to let all users upgrade. This way we can find out issues with V2 and upgrade as they come, instead of all at once.

For now, users are displayed a message asking them to upgrade, but they are not forced to do. That would be a second phase of our upgrade plan. We are hoping that by September or October there will be no more version 1 sites and we can "shutdown" that service and make it part of the memory of Sampa.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

I'm way behind on email

Marcelo Calbucci — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:31:59 GMT

It has been a crazy over the last 10 days. Last week I was sick for 2 days, then I moved houses on Friday/Saturday, then I got sick again on Tuesday and I'm feeling like a sloth on a bad day right now.

I'm very behind on email and the queue is very long, including many events that I should be publishing on the Seattle 2.0 blog.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

My customer is bigger than your customer

Marcelo Calbucci — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Last week Andrew Chen wrote an excellent post about achieving critical mass for your social network.

Andrew tends to focus very much in the social network aspects of the Internet, but between social network and non-social network there is something else. Something called Sampa.

Sampa is not a social network because people don't join Sampa. Sampa is also not like Ning because people are not building social networks. In Sampa people are building *their* private place on the web. The basic difference on this context is that on a social network everyone is equal. Everyone creates a profile. Everyone can add content, upload pictures, edit the family tree, etc.

On Sampa, the site owner is the king. People don't "join Sampa". People "join your site". Actually, that's not even true. Your friends and family are *added* to your site (like on Google Groups).

There is a big difference because the cost of joining is pretty high compared to the cost of doing nothing from a visitor's point-of-view. In other words, if I tell you to join my social network you are expected to go somewhere, fill out some form, upload your avatar, pick a password, etc. If somebody adds you to their Sampa site, you are just part of it. Done.

But that is just the beginning of the differences; the biggest difference is on the aspect of content creation. In any social network, be it the smallest of social networks created on Ning or on Facebook, the life blood of it is people actively participating on it, which means to update their status, to upload pictures, to write blog posts, add messages to forums, etc. If you have just one or two users doing that, the social network collapses in the dust it accumulates everywhere.

On Sampa, you only need 1 motivated content creator for the site to work. All other users can happily be "passive" users, just consuming that content.

The great aspects of this, is that Sampa monetizes out of content consumers (like Google Search), not content creators (like Facebook or Ning users).

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Change of Twitter address

Marcelo Calbucci — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:05:43 GMT

My new Twitter address is @calbucci.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

EXCLUSIVE: Comcast calls DirecTV a thief

Marcelo Calbucci — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:36:00 GMT

I just got out of the phone with a Comcast representative that told me in all these words: "DirecTV steals from their customers. Would you have business with a company that steals from you?"

That beauty and a few more like that was what a Comcast customer service representative was telling me over the phone when I called to either cancel my service or negotiate a bundle package for my new house.

John, the guy that motivated this blog post, lost it after he realized that the overall package that Verizon Bundle is offering on their website is much cheaper than what Comcast Triple Play. Once he realized the price was much different, he decided to appeal to many things, including a lot of things that don't matter much:

"You'll have two bills". It's all automatic debt for me.
"You'll have to sign a contract". I don't plan on switching services every six months.
"They will charge you a full month payment when you subscribe". Ok, so they will charge me $100 on my first month instead of $30.
"Their Internet price doesn't include the $6.50 for the ISP". Right, so instead of paying $94.97 I'll have to pay $101.47. That's still $60 less than Comcast.
"They will increase the price by $35 after 3 months". That's right, they will charge $136.47 which is $24 less than Comcast.

So, John turned to his how to screw a customer book and start rambling on how DirecTV steal from the customer, why would I do business with somebody that steal from me, etc.

After all is said and done I sent an email to Comcast through their website complaining about John and within the hour got a response from Ervia D. apologizing for the occurrence.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

About Site

Fri, 19 May 2006 01:38:39 GMT

Ton contact me send email to marcelo-at-calbucci.com.

This site was created with Sampa, a new way to create and publish your blog, pictures, list of friends, review of books and more without the need to learn any programming skills. To know more visit www.sampa.com.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa

Should you go to MBA school?

Marcelo Calbucci — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:55:04 GMT

I've got quite a few friends that keep asking me what I think of MBA School in the context if they should attend it. First of, I don't have an MBA so it's not 100% clear what value people get of this degree. However, I do have several things to point out.

The most common kind of friend asking me that is the technical guy/gal. Usually a Developer, Tester or Program Manager that wants to expand his opportunities by attending an MBA School.

Here is a question back to you: Would you go to learn Micro-biology if you want to be a Chef?

My point is, if you are thinking about getting an MBA you have to consider that you want to have a career in business management, not continue your technical career path.

I've got quite a few friends who did attend MBA school, to go back or continue on their technical job as a developer (e.g.). You spend 2-3 years of your life, tens of thousands of dollars for what? So you know how to read a balance sheet?

We don't have any MBAs at Sampa, but one of our "helpers" is a former Director at Microsoft with an MBA degree. He consolidated my belief that the value of an MBA is two-fold: First, you learn about important business concepts that even if you don't use it, you know they exist and know where to find more about it. Second, you learn how to name things!

That's right, one of the things I like the most about talking w/ MBAs (or people that have years of business management experience) is that they have name for things that was hard for me to verbalize before.

As time goes by, I learn more and more and I can fluently use the MBA's terminology as in Conversion, SG&A, NRE, Churn, CAC, LTV, ROI, Decay, Cohort, Capex, Opex, COGS, etc.

I guess my point is that you should get an MBA if you are the kind of person who learns more at a classroom *and* you're ready to leave your current job to pursue a full-time management gig.

Check out: Marcelo Calbucci Blog | Seattle 2.0 | 90 Weeks | Sampa