Online Sales - Simple things sell Better
An article in “Practical Web Design” magazine from December of 2006 talks about the “Appropriateness of the product to the medium”.
A graphic from that article has been recreated and placed here for reference.
In general, the higher the cost of the purchase relative to the complexity of the checkout process will make your product much more difficult to sell online. Higher priced products with a more complex purchase process will enjoy its best conversion rates through a face-to-face sell (Real Estate and Automobiles) while lower priced products with an easy purchase process are much more successful online (Books, Software and Music).
Read MoreConversion Matters - Remove Barriers
Make it quick and easy for people to purchase your product. Don’t make them fill out more information than is absolutely necessary to process the order. Don’t force them to opt-in to your newsletter. Don’t make them provide shipping details for software download. Most online credit card processing companies can determine the type of credit card (i.e. Visa, Mastercard) from the number. Don’t force your customer to select a credit card type. It an unnecessary step. If you sell software online, take a tip from these guys.
Read MoreRetail Business Online - Only take credit cards
Save yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and only accept online credit card orders. You may loose 10% in overall revenue (potential profit) from those who may purchase in another way, but you also loose 40% in customer service and time costs (expense) dealing with those who “don’t get it”. That’s a 30% revenue increase.
Read MoreProduct/Market fit is the key to startup success
Marc Andreessen continues his “Guide to Startups” blog series and addresses a very fundamental principal that speaks to the root of what makes a startup work- “The only thing that matters; Product/Market Fit”.
It starts with identifying common traits that best correlate with both startup success and failure: Team, Product, and Market.
In my experience, many startups spend an extraordinary amount of time “team building” and creating a “Stellar Product”. While these things are vital there should be a constant need to understand the market. Any market is constantly shifting and the team should be consuming market data like they consume breakfast, lunch and dinner. Keeping your team up to speed on your market makes it easier to reach “product/market fit”- the key to startup success. Detailed market knowledge allows better, more focused, strategies and the ability to easily determine features, functions and capabilities to exclude from your stellar product.
Rachleff’s Law of Startup Success: The number one company killer is lack of market.
Excerpt from “The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 4: The only thing that matters“:
Read MoreDo whatever is required to get to product/market fit. Including changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different market, telling customers no when you don’t want to, telling customers yes when you don’t want to, raising that fourth round of highly dilutive venture capital — whatever is required.
Is it useful?
From the Bokardo blog today, this techno-centric cartoon that pretty much says it all.
I find that people sometimes think that technology itself is the solution to business problems. In fact this is far from the truth. The application of technology can provide a solution.
Often programmers (we can be a focused group) will not see the forest for the trees. We are so busy making sure that as many cool features as possible are built into a form, we forget the form just needs to quickly collect a name and email address.
Bear Grylls: Thrill Seeker and Inspiration
I first saw this guy on the Discover Channel show “Man vs. Wild” while working late one night. Something caught my attention during the show. I remember thinking to myself that I had not seen this much enthusiasm and passion since the late Steve Irwin. The more I watched the more I became interested in just who this character was outside of “tv”. In addition to having an interesting tv show, it turns out that Bear Grylls (a nickname since birth) has one hell of a story.
From his website, “Bear spent three years with the British Special Forces. During this time he had a horrendous parachuting accident whilst in southern Africa and broke his back in three places. Yet two years later, after severe rehabilitation, he overcame the odds to become the youngest British climber ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return alive.
His book on this extraordinary story soared into the Top 10 of the Bestseller list. Bear is one of the youngest and most successful motivational speakers in the world.” - http://www.beargrylls.com
I look forward to meeting this guy someday. Hopefully when I’m not lost in a remote jungle somewhere. Rock on Bear
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