Do you know who is visiting your website?  Sure, you’ve probably got analytics software like Google Analytics that tells you lots of great statistics.  But do those mindless numbers tell you about the actual people that are looking at your right now?

Crowd Science aims to do just that.  Founded in December of 2007, Crowd Science is a “real-time demographics platform” that tells you exactly who is visiting your site through simple market research.

Here’s how it works: after creating your Crowd Science account, you get a snippet of code to put on your website.  Then, Crowd Science will randomly (and politely) prompt visitors to answer a few short questions.

The survey is brief and unobtrusive.  Crowd Science is proud that they have, “no flashing, no punching monkeys, no free iPods, and a zero-pixel footprint.”  After all, that sort of market research doesn’t seem to work nowadays anyway.

The data that they collect for you is invaluable.  Crowd Science not only finds out the age, gender, and other general demographics about your visitors, but also finds out their hobbies and interests as well.

Entrepreneurs can use the data to find out more about their target market.  Blog writers can find out what kinds of posts their readers want.  Companies can find out what advertising will appeal to their readers.

The best part of Crowd Science: they have a free account.  You can try it on your website today.

Photo by davidchief/flickr.

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I’m an avid reader of TechCrunch, Read Write Web, Copyblogger, and scores of other good business-related blogs. My reading lists can sometimes be a bit long — on a normal weekday I may read as many as 25 fairly lengthy blog posts.

I bet you and I are pretty similar.  In this digital age, we are all constantly surrounded by good, helpful information that we can use to build our businesses and enrich our lives.

Yet that good information isn’t always timely.  I often need to save good ideas for later.  Here’s what I do:

Step 1: Use a Feed Reader

I can’t live without Google Reader.  Hopefully you’ve already picked a reader that you can’t live without, too.

Step 2: Mark Articles to Read Later

Sometimes I find a good article that I don’t have time to read.  I mark it using the Read it Later browser plugin, and come back to it when I have more time.

Step 3: Clip to Evernote

When I find something particularly noteworthy, I save it to Evernote.  Evernote is the first piece of software that I’ve wanted to pay for, but the free version is more than plenty anyway.  Whenever I find a good quote, idea, or other random inspiration, I clip it to one of my Evernote notebooks.

Here’s the best part: Evernote automatically syncs with my iPod, too, so I can have my inspiration on the go.

Photo by flickr/kofoed.

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The Internet is a crowded place.  According to a recent NetCraft survey, 1.5 million websites were added to the Internet during June 2009 alone. It seems everyone wants to take a piece of the proverbial Internet pie.

As a website owner, you’ve already got a piece of that pie.  Now all you’ve got to do is convince your customers that your pie is the real deal — not some chintzy store brand knockoff.  In a word, you need credibility.

Credibility is what tells your customers that your company is light years ahead of the 13-year old kid down the street that’s just trying to make a few extra bucks this summer.  Check out this list of 22 things you can do right now to make your website more credible:

1. Have Quality Content

Let’s face it, nobody wants to read a blog of auto-aggregated posts. There are far too many high-quality blogs out there to waste time on such nonsense. A lot has been said about this topic already, so I won’t belabor the topic any further. For further reading:

• How to Create Better Content: Treat Your Readers Like Dogs (Copyblogger)
• 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content (Chris Brogan)
• How to Become an Authority in Your Niche: Eight Content Development Tactics (Dosh Dosh)

2. Make Consistent Updates

Have you ever walked by a store day after day to see the same products in the window with the same offers? It doesn’t happen. And if it does happen, you can bet that the store will go out of business. The same principle applies to your website. Give people the impression that you are busy! One word of caution: If you use blog feeds, twitter feeds, etc., make sure that they don’t drown out the main purpose of your website. Some resources:

• 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write (Chris Brogan)
• 10 Awesome Ways to Integrate Twitter With Your Website (Nettuts+)

Also, displaying a date stamp at the bottom of your website will help show customers that your website is updated frequently.

3. Display Real World Contact Information

Do you want to let people know that your business is legitimate? Put a physical address on your website. If you work from home, put down your home address. Is it safe? Are people going to send you spam mail? Probably. But let’s face it; if spammers really want your address, they’ll get it anyways.

4. Include Search Functionality

For a website with several levels of navigation, this one is a must. No matter how much sense you think your navigation makes, most people would much rather have the computer do the heaving lifting for them. If you don’t feel like programming your own search engine, take a look at Google’s Custom Search. It works wonderfully and is very customizable.

• Google Site Search – A Google Search Engine for Your Website (Google)

5. Make an Obvious Place for Feedback/Help

Nothing irks me more than when I am on a website and can’t find a place to get help. Create a form for feedback! Make it obvious! If you have a customer service number, put it somewhere on every page (even if it’s at the very bottom in the footer).

• 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design (Smashing Magazine) – See #5

6. Avoid too Much Info (E-Dribble) / the SEO Trap

Two things on this one: 1) Company website committees are always a bad idea. There are far too many technical considerations that go into a website for the company secretary to be having a significant say in what goes and what doesn’t. You will end up with a whole bunch of content that doesn’t really matter, or “E-Dribble” as my friend Bob Rajan calls it. Get the trusted opinion of a graphic designer, SEO expert, usability expert, marketing/social media expert, and a programmer. Sure, you need some feedback from your target market — just keep in mind that your target market is not within your own office space (in most cases). 2) Please don’t stuff your website with SEO keywords. Google will penalize you for doing this, and it will make your customers confused or upset.

• Great Comic on Keyword Stuffing (Ranked Hard)

7. Focus on Design/Navigation/Usability

I won’t go into any detail on these topics. There are literally thousands of quality articles on each of these topics.

Some resources to explore:

• Smashing Magazine – Covers all of these topics.
• UX Booth – Covers usability.
• Psdtuts – Has tutorials on web interface design.
• Noupe – Covers all of these topics.
• Pattern Tap – Inspiration for good design/navigation/usability.

8. Display Security Badges

If you run an e-commerce website, this is a must. Check out Amazon.com for examples.

9. Include Testimonials

These always help, even if you have to get your relatives to help you out.

10. Write a Detailed About Us Page

People are curious. They want to know who the man or woman behind the curtain is. You don’t need to be embarrassed if you are a small company. Some people like doing business with small companies over the big companies anyways.

11. Display Clear Terms of Service

This is where you make any disclaimers and get all of the legal mumbo jumbo down somewhere in writing. Don’t feel like shelling out the dough for a lawyer?  Use this free tool instead:

• Privacy Policy / Terms of Service Generator (Ben Nadel)

12. Include a Privacy Policy (if applicable)

The privacy policy is to inform your users what information you are gathering when they are visiting your website. This includes personally identifying information (such as forms, cookies, etc.) as well as non-personally identifying information (analytics such as browser type, geographic region, language preference, etc.). Take a look at almost any website and it SHOULD have one (unless you’re a blog or something like that ).

13. Make a Print CSS File

Even in our paperless world, there still are A LOT of people that would rather print out something before reading it. If you want people to seriously read your content, then make it easy for them to print. This can be done with what’s called a print CSS file — if you have no idea what the heck print CSS even means, don’t worry.  A quick Google search will help.  Or, if you use WordPress for your website/blog, take the easy way out with this plugin:

• Bunny’s Print CSS Plugin (Wordpress)

14. Make Your Site Mobile-ready

What’s the point? Well, have you seen how many BlackBerries and iPhones there are these days? I look at 5-10 websites every day on a mobile device. A company can communicate attention to details through small things like this.

15. Avoid Stock Photos and Animated GIFs

Forgive me if I offend you on this point. Five things:

1. First of all, DO NOT USE GOOGLE IMAGES. Please, please, please. There are much better free resources out there. See below for some suggestions.
2. Don’t try to make your images bigger. This will lead to pixelation and a very poor looking website.
3. Be careful with free/cheap stock photography. Avoid using the top-rated photo on sites like iStockPhoto. You don’t want the picture on your front page to be the exact same as someone else’s.
4. Don’t use stock photography to represent people in your own company. If you’re trying to show what your company is like, take a little bit of extra time to get your own photos. Nobody likes “fakie” things.
5. Lastly, I’d like to talk about animated GIF’s. There are very, very few instances when animated GIF’s add to the credibility of a website.

Free yourself from mediocrity:

• Creative Commons Search – This will search flickr and a few other popular photo sharing sites for Creative Commons images. Many of these images have been specially licensed for commercial use.
• Vecteezy – If you happen to have a copy of Adobe Illustrator laying around. Check this website out. You really don’t need any superior skills to use these.

16. Don’t Startle Your Visitors

Hidden music. Don’t do it. Strange people walking onto the bottom of the screen. Don’t do it. Advertisements that talk without a click. Don’t do it. Marketing boxes that pop up as soon as you enter the website…I think I’ve made my point. I leave a website immediately if any of these events occur.

17. Don’t Forget Titles on Pages

This might seem like a strange detail to single out. It’s important. The page title is one of the most important parts of a website in terms of search engine optimization and navigation. If the titles of the pages are inconsistent or misspelled, you can bet that there are a lot of other “little details” that will be overlooked within that company. Guides to page titles:

• How to Write Killer Blog Titles & Why Mine Suck (Outspoken Media)

18. Keep Your Code Organized

Another “little detail” that can be telling of how serious a company is about doing business the right way. Use these code optimizers:

• Clean CSS
• JS Minifier

19. Check for Broken Links

The problem with broken links is obvious. Here are some ways to help keep on top of your links:

• W3C Link Checker (W3C)
• Free Online Broken Link Checker (DeadLinks)

20. Be Careful with ads

In an effort to maximize revenues, many websites will purposely try to place ads where they will accidentally be clicked on. These throw your credibility out the window. Nobody likes trickery when it comes to business.

21. Ensure Cross-Browser Compliance

Creating a website that works on all of the major browsers is a time-consuming and costly undertaking. I recommend that you just focus on the modern browsers: Firefox 2.0 and up, Safari 3 and up, and  Internet Explorer 7 and up (some will argue that IE6 still needs support). Some resources to check what your website looks like in multiple browsers:

• Browser Lab (Adobe)
• Multiple IEs (TredoSoft)
• Cross Browser Testing (CrossBrowserTesting.com)

22. Have Good Error Management

When users take a wrong turn on a website, it never hurts to have a little help to guide them back to where they really want to go. A good error page can do just that.  Here are some fun examples:

• Chrisjennings.com
• A List Apart
• iStockPhoto

In case you wanted something a little more technical:

• 15 Essential Check Before Launching Your Website (Smashing Magazine)
• The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist (Box UK)
• Web Standards Checklist (Max Design)

Special thanks to:

• Pierre-Yann Dolbec
• Heather Burns
• Bob Rajan
• Wallace Jackson
• Dipti Tandon

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I’ll let my friend Seth take this one. This is one of the most valuable 2 minute video clips you will find on the topic of social networking for business.

Make sure to take a look at Seth Godin’s Blog for more straightforward advice on marketing.

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If you’re like me, you constantly have ideas of new business ventures flowing through your brain.  It’s the curse of the entrepreneur: no matter where you are, no matter what you are doing, ideas for ways to make money always seem to pop into your head.

Many of your ideas will be absolutely ridiculous, doomed to fail in the real business world.  Yet a few of your ideas might show some true potential, and you bounce them off of many different people — just to get some unbiased feedback.  We often ask family members, friends, co-workers, and others if they think our ideas will succeed.

Yet, we sometimes need to take the feedback of others with a grain of salt.  Is it ever okay to disregard the opinions of those that say our idea won’t work?  When do we follow our gut feelings, even amidst the naysayers?

What About the Television?  Or Nuclear Power?

Naysayers aren’t always correct.  Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, said in 1926:

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.

We’ve heard of many other instances like this one: in 1878, Western Union scoffed at the idea of a telephone; in 1932, Albert Einstein thought nuclear energy was impossible; and so on.  I bet there have even been naysayers against the potential of the Internet — and look how wrong they have been!

Don’t believe everything that is said about your venture ideas.  As an entrepreneur, you have something that most other people don’t have: a gut feeling!  Oftentimes your gut will tell you that something will work, even when everyone else says it won’t.

Confirm Your Gut Feelings by Listening to Your Customers

Many people have followed their gut feelings on dead-end venture ideas, and have lost millions of dollars in the process.  Entrepreneurs become “married” to their ideas, and start chasing their tails in vain pursuit of financial success.  That’s why so many businesses fail, even within the first year of opening shop.

Among all the voices that you hear as an entrepreneur, only one can save you from absolute of failure: your customers.  No matter what anyone else says, your customers will decide whether your company succeeds or fails.

So, you want to know whether you’ve got a good idea or not?  Ask those who would be your potential customers.  If they’re not going to buy, then you know your idea won’t work!  It’s that simple.

Save yourself some heartache by going to your customers first.  Often you can adjust your ideas to make them work, according to the advice that they give you.  Your selective hearing as an entrepreneur should always be focused towards your customers.

Photo on main page by striatic.

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1. Startup Tip #1: Have Unscalable Customer Service

With the advent of Twitter and the continual ascent of Facebook, corporations are being forced to pay attention to social media. Most corporations in the Fortune 100 have some sort of strategy that they employ to make use of the social media craze.

Something that has always been interesting to me is that many of the CEO’s and leaders of these large corporations seem to be a little bit out of touch with technology themselves. Sure, they get the job done through technology advisors, but how many of them really know anything about technology (let alone social media)?

This recent study done by UberCEO gives a great insight into how many of the Fortune 100 CEO’s actually embrace social media themselves.

Photo on main page by diegocupolo.

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Earlier this year, Paul Graham wrote a phenomenal essay of the 13 pieces of advice that he would give to entrepreneurs in the world today.  Number six reads, “Offer surprisingly good customer service.”

Superb customer service in the early stages of a company, Graham explains, accomplishes two critical goals for startup success: it surprises the customer, and helps you learn more about your target market.  This is exactly what you need in your company’s early years.

Great Customer Service Surprises the Customer

We recently purchased Quickbooks Pro 2009 to handle our bookkeeping for Simpleslice.  Our decision to use Quickbooks wasn’t because the software is good (it’s actually quite atrocious), but because it’s the dominant accounting software for small businesses in the market today.  If we ever needed help, it wouldn’t be difficult to find it.

Lo and behold, we needed help right away.  The software wouldn’t activate over the Internet properly, and I found myself on the phone with Quickbooks customer service.  And the experience wasn’t pleasant.

I’ll spare you the details of the ten awful minutes I wasted on the phone with them, just to get a five-digit code that would unlock my software.  Quicken’s customer service was terrible.  And for some reason, that was exactly what I had expected.

As Graham explains in his essay, crusty old companies like Quicken can afford to have bad customer service.  People (including us here at Simpleslice) will still buy and use its products, no matter how poorly its customer support assistants can speak English with you.

As a startup company, however, you have an advantage.  You can blow your competitors’ customer service out of the water by adding a few personal touches here and there to make your customers’ experience better.  Customers will be surprised when they don’t get the second-rate treatment they’ve come to expect from every other company.

Great Customer Service is Market Research

Magic Johnson, the famous NBA-superstar-turned-businessman, has had his share of successes and failures as an entrepreneur. Although his company Magic Johnson Enterprises is thriving today with over $700 million in assets, things weren’t always so easy for Johnson.  His first retail venture failed miserably, actually.

That first venture was an NBA merchandise outlet called Magic 32, taken from the number that Johnson wore while playing for the Lakers for over 20 years.  As Johnson explains, Magic 32 failed because he didn’t think about the customer:

Never make your business about you, make it about the customer. I was the owner, and I was also the buyer, and when I went out I bought 50 of these and 100 of those because I liked them. I only bought what I liked. But then nobody bought anything from me.

This is a mistake that many startups make.  The founder falls in love with the product, and thinks everyone in the world will want it — only to find out that no one wants it, and within a year the company has failed.  Good customer service can prevent this.

As you’re helping your customers with problems and concerns, gather and save all the information you can.  Without even knowing it, your customers are participating in a totally honest market research survey!  They’re telling you exactly what works and doesn’t work with your product, all for free!

As you do your best to resolve your customers’ concerns, take the principles that you’ve learned and apply them to the products of your business.  Improve based on the customer feedback that you’re given.  Adapt your company to what the market wants, not what you want.

Worry About Scaling Customer Service Operations Later

As your company grows, going the extra mile (like personally writing a letter to every single client) may not always be possible.  So, what do you do if the customer service that your startup has thrived on all these years suddenly starts to become unscalable?  Is it time to panic?

Of course not.  As companies grow, changes will inevitably come.  You’ll find new ways to offer great customer service, even if you’re not the one personally doing it.  You’ll be able set different, more scalable customer service goals for your company at that time.  When your company has been around long enough, all of these things will (hopefully) come quite naturally.

For now, in the early years of your company, just keep focusing on the superb customer service, no matter how unscalable it may seem.  Your customers will be surprised, and you’ll get some free market research.
Photo by shawnzlea.

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Customer relationship management software (CRM for short) seems to be a dime a dozen these days. Companies have all sorts of software options for managing their contacts — from desktop applications to web applications, free software to pay software. Choosing among these many alternatives is sometimes difficult.

Most CRMs are too Bloated

Screenshot of Sugar CRM

The first CRM software we used here at Simpleslice was Sugar CRM. Sugar is a free, web-based program that you can install on on your own web server with almost no effort at all. Sounds pretty good, right?

Well, like most other CRM software, Sugar is clunky to use and too bloated with features. Getting multiple users set up is difficult, and navigating through the mounds of buttons on the menu is nearly impossible for the uninitiated.

We left Sugar as fast as we could.  It was just too much for a small business like us!  We then started on a journey to find an easy, inexpensive web-based CRM to help manage our contacts.

Doorbell CRM: Sales Software for Non-Sales People

That’s when we found Doorbell CRM. Doorbell, the brainchild of Smibs, sets itself apart from the rest of the CRM world by being, “sales software for non-sales people.” Intrigued by this distinction, we decided to give it a try.

Doorbell was just released from private beta on July 7, 2009.  Despite many cosmetic enhancements in this new release, however, Doorbell still isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing product.  We’re confident that the user interface will continue to improve over time, however, and recognize that this software is still relatively new.

Even with its user interface shortcomings, however, Doorbell does pack some powerful features.

The Big Four: Contacts, Tasks, Opportunities, Groups

Whereas other CRM systems try to cram hundreds of features into every single window, the entire Doorbell software only really works with four major areas: contacts, tasks, opportunities, and groups.

• Contacts: an address book-style listing of the contacts for your company.  Within this section you can add notes and to-do items for people and companies in your contact list.
• Tasks: an aggregation of all the to-do items that you’ve recorded for your contacts.  You can also add new tasks here.
• Opportunities: a simple listing of potential or upcoming ventures for your company.  In the words of Doorbell: “An opportunity doesn’t have to be about a business deal, it can also be about finding new office space or hiring a talented contractor.”
• Groups: a listing of contact groups for your company.  This is a good spot to organize your contacts into groups other than by company; a good example might be people to whom you’d like to send a Christmas card this year.

Doorbell does a great job at keeping things simple and organized.  We were very impressed with the overall structure and simplicity of the program.

Overall Pro’s and Con’s of Doorbell

As we were using the system, we found many good (and bad) points that are worth mentioning.

Final Thoughts

It’s evident whom Doorbell is trying to compete with: Highrise from 37signals. The Doorbell frontend website is suspiciously similar to Highrise, and the features that Doorbell promotes seem to be subtly attacking Smibs’s perceived shortcomings of Highrise.

Highrise is a much more mature product when compared to Doorbell. However, if Doorbell can manage to hire a few more talented graphic designers and continue to expand on its features (while remaining true to its simplicity), it may have a fighting chance at overtaking a portion Highrise’s market share.

If you’re willing to overlook the bland design of Doorbell, then we’d more than recommend giving it a go for your company. Doorbell really is a good piece of software.

Photo by magnetbox.

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This is one of the most helpful videos on blogging strategy (especially for business minded people). You might recognize Tim Ferriss as the author of “The Four Hour Work Week.” He is not by any means a “techie”, but has somehow managed to garner a lot of fantastic tips through managing his own blog.

To go to the original article: The Tim Ferriss Lifestyle Design Blog

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When putting up a website, most small business owners place their faith in the adage, “if you build it, they will come.” They commission a web design company to make a decent-looking informational website, and within a month their business is online.

But then a few months go by, and nothing happens.  Not a single sale comes through the website.

The saying, “if you build it, they will come” may have been true in the old days of the Internet, but not anymore; competition among businesses online has gotten to be too great over the years.  A plain old informational website just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Herein lies two important secrets to online business success: 1) focus your website on some sort of customer action, and 2) create your website content to revolve around that action.

Secret #1: Focus on a Customer Action

We’re currently redesigning our Simpleslice.com website. We found that our current website, although clean and crisp-looking, could be improved to have a more apparent goal for our potential customers.  Sure, we’ve got a “Contact Us” link on every single page. But what’s the motivation for a potential client to contact us? To send us a friendly message? To ask us for a free website quote? It’s kind of ambiguous. There’s no overall goal.

Sam Brown, a freelance web developer in Scotland, has a very distinct goal with his blog: to get readers to subscribe to his RSS feed. On the top of every page, in big letters, he promotes his RSS feed with a random, clever tagline.  Is it any more obvious what he hopes his visitors will do after visiting his site?

When a customer knows that you want him or her to do when visiting your website, they’ll be more likely to do it!  It just makes sense.

Be creative in selecting a customer action.  It doesn’t always have to be to just “fill out a contact form.”  It could be purchasing a product, requesting a free quote, signing up for a free trial, or anything else related to your company.  In his essay titled, “The Power of the Marginal,” Paul Graham explains that the most successful businesses are the ones that are different from everyone else — so be creative when deciding on an action.

Once you’ve selected an action that you’d like to move your customers toward, it’s time to plan your website content accordingly.

Secret #2: Create Your Content Around the Desired Action

Now that you know what you want the customer to do, you can plan out the rest of your website. Everything on your website has to drive the customer towards your desired end action.

Businesses will often put too much text on their websites.  Droning on and on about your company or product merits will only bore customers.  Avoid this marketing fluff as much as possible.  If the text on your website doesn’t gently nudge your customer towards the final action goal, don’t include it!

Giving information about your company and its products is important.  It serves as an informational basis upon which your customers make decisions.  Yet, you can transform even product descriptions to help lead your customers towards the action goal.

For example, let’s say your goal is to have visitors sign up for a free trial of your product.  Instead of saying, “our product will help you…” say, “As you try our product for free, you’ll find that it helps you…”  This little shift in focus will help drive customers toward your end action goal.

These are just two (of many) secrets that will help your business’s website succeed.  We’ll keep you updated as we apply these principles to our soon-to-be-redesigned Simpleslice.com website.

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