I do realise that not everyone hangs on everything I have to say, but for those out these who leap out of bed in the morning just to hear my thoughts on things, here’s your very own “Julian101 iPhone app!”

Keep me in your pocket! Show me to your friends (and followers)! And let me keep you updated with my latest ramblings! I’ll be sharing thoughts on business, design, creativity and to be honest, whatever comes to mind!

Download Now!

Yes, I know I can click the arrow keys or tab to get to the button, but most users wouldn’t know that. Come on Vodafone, put a vertical scrollbar there.

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Project+Management+Software

As you can imagine I was pretty brassed off to see our logo linking to a competitor’s URL and the same thing happening with another ad. Check out the screenshot above (Click for a larger image).

I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m unimpressed and will be emailing them this blog post link as it’s just ridiculous to have one company’s logo linking to another company’s URL.

So have a search around, check your own phrases and make sure Cuil isn’t doing the same to your company image. Let me know if you find any other dodgy results.

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com, ProWorkflowBlog.com & Julian101.com
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This will also be a platform for ProWorkflow team members to have a say, so you’ll get tips from the developers, sales staff as well as product updates and news. We’ll also be featuring customer testimonials and talking about their businesses.

Feel welcome to put your 2 cents in and let us know if there’s anything we should add, remove or otherwise.

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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Here’s the article on the New Zealand Herald if you want to read the PR guff… There are plenty of hard working genuine businesses out there needing a push – shame on NZ Herald for printing this…

“Nelson businessman Alan Trent says he is committing more than $1 million to the development and launch of a shopping website, 735pm.com, aimed at New Zealand retailers and consumers.

One of the site’s features is it gets redesigned every day at 7.35pm. While retailing websites including Telecom’s Ferrit have struggled to win significant numbers of customers, Trent said 735pm.com would provide a unique shopping experience and offer significant opportunities for companies to market nationwide.”

I’m fairly black and white with my opinions, but I also like to explain. I’m going to point out some areas that need consideration or work. Also just some random thoughts. The main issues I have with the concept are these:

Be Careful What You Say!

Be sure that if you make claims through PR that you can back them up. Bloggers are sitting there ready to pounce on every opportunity to prove people wrong (if they are)

1 Million Dollars! – Holy crap! Development is Cheap These days!

“Alan Trent says he is committing more than $1 million to the development and launch of a shopping website,”
You have to be kidding me! EVERYTHING on the website/sites shown could be developed by a single basic developer for 5-15k max. Any web person reading this will agree. Unless we’re missing something here, basic configurable shopping cart software to build a website like this can be purchased for next to nothing offline.

Just look at these Google Searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=free+shopping+cart+software
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cheap+shopping+cart+software

And even most hosting providers throw in e-commerce and shopping cart software as standard these days. It’s so cheap they can hardly give it away!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cheap+web+hosting+with+shopping+cart
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=free+web+hosting+with+shopping+cart

And as for CMS (Content Management Software) to actually build the structure of the website – that’s dirt cheap these days as well…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=free+cms
Note: There are some great, more powerful tools in this space that cost a bit more, but for this website, it could have been done easily on the cheap in a few weeks.

Development Note:
This is a business model that ABSOLUTELY should be market tested before throwing ANY money at it. The reality is that the entire concept could have been tested using a custom Wordpress blog for the website, and link daily blog posts of products to a simple PayPal account. It would have taken 1x day to setup, and I actually think would have been more successful, not to mention actually able to be found in Google, unlike many of the pages on the current site (Don’t use flash – Google hates it).

“Unique shopping experience” – The Concept isn’t Unique!

I’ve seen it done heaps before. Here’s just a few:
- http://firstin.co.nz/splash/index.php
- http://1-day.co.nz/

Think About Conversion!

Ok, here’s the crux of e-commerce – it’s all about conversion rate and conversion cost. Let’s say you had 1000 people visit the website. How many people are interested in purchasing a $399 jacket right now? (note: coming into spring). 1% maybe? so you have 10 people wanting to buy a jacket. Great! oops! We only have one style? Ok, so how many of the 10 people (out of 1000)wanting to buy a $399 jacket want that exact style – perhaps 5%? 

So we’re getting somewhere now – we know that 5% of 1% of 1000 visitors want to buys this exact jacket (coming out of winter). So the conversion rate is 0.05% of site traffic.

But! Wait! How many of them, actually not only want the winter jacket coming into spring, and that exact style, want to purchase now, but ALSO have a credit card (most kids have eftpos – buy in malls), and how many want to buy sight unseen without trying it on for size/feel???

Can you feel the conversion rate dropping here? I would guess it could be down to 0.01% by now! And that’s no problem as it’s a numbers game, so all you do is lift the website traffic. So with a 0.01% conversion rate, how much traffic do you need to sell a jacket?  Answer: 10,000 genuine visitors (if you’re lucky)

So to sell two jackets? Another 10,000 visitors? These numbers are very difficult to achieve and sustain naturally as to drive a free ’social’ marketing campaign, as anybody in the know will tell you, it takes a HUGE about of work. The work would cost more in time and effort than you’d ever make in profit from the margin on a cheap traffic. I mean would you stay up day and night for months building social traffic just for a few dollars?

So that won’t work. It’s a one sided affair for the business, but it’s not the sort of model that’ll virally spread – it’ll take effort.

So that leave paid marketing. And simply put, the ongoing cost in banner ads, CPC’s, Adwords etc to drive 10,000 unique’s a day to the website will be WAY higher than the profit from the margins on the products shown after expenses and wages come out.

This is why people build stores with VARIETY: http://dse.co.nz, http://www.blizzard.com/store/, http://ascent.co.nz, http://www.gpstore.co.nz, http://www.amazon.com, http://www.trademe.co.nz etc…

In this day and age of people and businesses competing for eyeballs, you HAVE TO convert AS MANY of your traffic leads as possible, so any model that limits product selection is doomed to failure in the long term. Simply put, the maths won’t work.

Some Other Observations

 
On this page, there’s no way to get back to the homepage. Stick a link on the logo or at least a text link.

 
“Please Wait…” – aaaahhh, nup – Off to TradeMe. There is no excuse for a black loading page like this.

Here I can sign up to be notified 4 days before the Official Launch Date set for 24th of August, 2008.
They should sell an ebook on how they invented time travel as it’s the 28th today. Come on guys! Remove old links like this! You say you’re in ‘Daily Update’ mode. The least you can do is update your own blog’s main post!

I got to this page, which said “We will have products…” (haven’t you launched?) and it also had a typo “Click a catagories…”   sheesh!
So I clicked the categories and nothing was in there? No prob, I’ll click the 735pm logo to go back to the 735pm website. Nup! Took me to the blog! Aaargh!

 
Saw this ad on their blog! (Note: Image was scaled and this made the ad text rough) Can you believe it? They are wanting to tell people this is the ‘Ultimate Website’. Maybe tell ya nana, but hold off on the intelligent web community for now mate.

 
I had a hunch… Checked the bad ad image and found it is code scaled from an un-optimised 800px wide JPG.

I think this is the current website. nice lady. Not sure who she is or why she’s there… Maybe they just like her? It’s a huge image though, 600×1200px so they should keep in mind download time… Heaps of people will want to download her – she’s Russian (russianchick.jpg) ;-)

 
Also, can’t click products to purchase off the homepage.

Anyway, back to the main launch website…

 
Personally, this brings back memories from 1995 (December). It’s all Flash, and badly designed. I thought that they’d have at least put some good SEO bits in the source code…

I like the Meta bits…

<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ />
<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”no-cache” />
<meta http-equiv=”expires” content=”-1″ />
<meta http-equiv=”pragma” content=”no-cache” />
<meta id=”metadescription” name=”description” content=”735pm” />
(What, no description to give to your friend Google?)
<meta id=”metakeywords” name=”keywords” content=”b & b, boats, cheap, coffee, concrete, cool products, deals, food, furniture, garden, gifts, holiday, houses, landscaping, luxury, quality, restaurant, shopping, specials, stocks, sweet as, travel, wine” />
(Seriously, who searches for the keyword: “Sweet As”, and are you planning to sell “Boats” and “Concrete” on one day sales via the web? If so, will you still honour the $7 shipping fee?
<meta id=”metacopyright” name=”copyright” content=”copyright © 735pm” />
<meta id=”metaauthor” name=”author” content=”735pm” />
<meta name=”resource-type” content=”document” />
<meta name=”distrbution” content=”global” />
<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” />
<meta name=”revisit-after” content=”1 days” />
<meta name=”rating” content=”general” />

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Ok, so I want to buy a snowboard bag…

 
Wow! That is a punchy layout! I’ll check the terms and conditions. I’m sure they’ll be thorough as I’m trusting this business with my credit card…

 
Excellent, I like doing business with simple terms and conditions… Where’s the privacy info though? This is credit card stuff we’re talking about? Maybe in the spirit of all things Web2.0, they decided it was just ‘to cluttered’. So anyway, I signed up and activated my account… Then go linked to my friend again…

 
But I like the last line underneath the lady (A mouthful):
“Your account has been activated, click the link below to be transferred to 735pm.com. 735pm.com Welcome to 735pm.com!

So let’s buy it…

 
“More Shipping Options Coming Soon” – eh? What’s the current shipping option? I have no idea if it’s even going to arrive on a Camel?

Country? You mean they’ll ship to my PO Box in Russia for only $10 (by Camel?)
Wait! What’s this ad in the corner….

 
Ahhh!!!! I get it now! It took me a little time, and I’m a bit slow. It’s a short term venture. According to this website, the business must be planning to go under on the 10th September 2008.

Let this be a warning to all. If you plan to launch a new web business, make sure you’ve run it by some people in the tech industry first. Otherwise you could launch into a storm. Sack the developer of this project now – today.

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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Also, if we’re completely honest it looks a bit thrown together by a bunch of people from the Web2 ‘bug button’ community. It’s just a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Read what this is below:

Meaning: Dogs Breakfast
An unappealing mixture of many things… a hodgepodge… a
disorganized mess… but probably still usable (or consumable in the
case of food.) From the idea that a dog will eat anything and feeding
it a mixture of whatever is on hand. (Unappealing because only the dog
finds its breakfast appealing… if you see or smell the dog food in
the morning, as you’re feeding the dog, it may well turn your stomach.)

Man oh man! You would think that each new release should achieve three main goals.
1. Add much needed functionality
2. Fix or remove broken functionality
and
3. Make the operating system easier to use… Here are my initial thoughts on this.

1. Add much NEEDED functionality

There’s a big difference between NEEDS and WANTS (Ask ya parents). Looks like they’ve just said ‘Yes!’ to every feature asked for and added even more anyway. All the extra features and functionality cost the users as I bet this level of GUI and feature set will require a higher hardware cost at the consumer end. ie: “Get Windows7! (but add another gig of ram!)”

2. Fix or remove BROKEN functionality

Hopefully they have fixed the plethora of issues in XP and Vista, but this looks like a full code upgrade? Does that mean we’ll be ‘Beta Testing’ yet another power-hungry MS operating system? Why can’t they ‘Refine’ their systems rather than continually ‘redevelop/redesign’ them? All that does is mean that Microsoft are always on the back foot from a stability perspective.

3. Make the operating system EASIER to use

Firstly, these screens are a work of art to look at, just like a forged Apple/SGI/Rembrandt. Trouble is through that an operating system should not be a ‘Work of Art’ but rather an ‘Operating System’. ie: A system to operate in on a daily basis. A decent OS should be elegant, but take a back seat to the real work being done in other applications.

An OS doesn’t earn you money, Excel, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Coldfusion etc do. The OS should be a platform that your working apps sit on. It should be secondary. This is where Microsoft don’t get it. I don’t want the OS interrupting my daily work.

just want it to work! When I’m on a deadline with a large client project I can just imagine the OS screaming “Look at me! Love me! Look at my widgets and dials!” and I’d say back “Bugger off – I’m working! and you’re just a lowly OS!”

The reality is that nearly all the apps I use daily worked fine back on XP and that was really stable! So Why do we actually need such a major rehash! All it does is make people have to learn a new way of working that will change again the next time Apple turns a corner and MS follow. I know MS want to hang around with the cool crowd (Apple) but they should drag their users around the block with them. We just want a smooth ride.

Anyway. Any system my grandmother couldn’t use is too complex. My grandmother couldn’t use this (and could use XP) so enough said. Throw your comments in the pot below – keen to hear people’s thoughts on these screenshots…

Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com

Here’s my comment on the issue…

Design is everything! and its nothing! If you have function without form, people are slow to adopt and will tell people your design sucks.

If you have form without function, people tell people the tool is awesome (even if it doesn’t meet their needs). So you’ll get higher signup rate with higher churn.

But then forget all that because all industries treat design differently anyway.  ;-)

Good design can help viral spread in (for example) vertical creative and IT sectors as people like to ‘be seen to use the cool tools’, however interestingly enough… in the general SME market that XERO and IPayroll are approaching, design means diddly squat – it’s functionality and usability that matters (design is just the icing on the cake).

Note: I do like the XERO design (slick) and dislike the IPayroll design (too 1998) personally.

Yes you need a tidy design, but the SMB market will be captured by meeting their needs at an affordable price without pee’ing them off through usability issues. It could be a wet fish with a screen for the SMB market – but if it ‘does the job’ it’ll sell.

Simple as that!

I’ll put it differently…

If approaching vertical markets like creative or IT, it’s the ’slickest solution’ that gets the rave reviews. people are fickle in verticals and chase the ‘new hot thing’ so if you don’t ‘meet their needs’ you won’t be in the game for long. We’ve been working hard at ProWorkflow (Project Management Software) for some time to strike the balance between nice design and solid function.

But in the general, wide SMB market, it’s the solution that ‘does the job’ that’ll sell. These people can’t be fooled. If it doesn’t work, they’ll drop it. Forget pretty buttons, 72pt type, mirrors and glows. the SMB market just want you to ‘fix the problem’ whereas many vertical niches want to ‘look cool first, then fix the problem second’

Disclaimer. I’ve been selling to thousands of SMB’s and verticals for 5-6 years and the secret to closing a sales is whether you use design, usability, functionality or pain as the ’sales closer’.

Knowing which approach to use and when comes with broad experience and experimentation.

Maybe someone should start a business doing ‘Design As A Service’ specifically for SaaS business wanting to use Web2 approaches on new platforms?

We’ll call it DAAS for SAAS on PAAS!

Oh! and FYI… this is an example of exactly what not to do design wise…
Check out: http://www.zogix.com/

God Awful! When Web2.0 design goes bad! Cutesy bubbles, shadows, pink and HUGE type (cos we’re all blind). This is an example of design not being applicable to their market. And there’s no relationship between their site design and the product design.

Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
————-
About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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1. It’s not better – it’s different!

2. I can’t say as I don’t know your needs yet, let’s talk further.

It got me thinking though. On one hand, we can try to continually redevelop the ProWorkflow project so we “beat” all the competition on the functionality front (development focus). On the other hand we can take time to talk with customers more to better understand their needs (sales focus). Or… We could just press on and spend more time and effort on marketing and drive more leads in the pipe (marketing focus).

So… assuming that you’ll never have a software product 100% right as customers have different needs, that you’ll always need to ‘sell’ to some degree, and that marketing is an ongoing ever changing mission, of these 3 key areas, should you have a primary focus as a company (ie: Sales) or should there be an even 1/3 1/3 1/3 split of time resource and energy?

Often tech companies (Especially Web 2.0 startups) have a strong focus (due to skill bias) in one area but neglect the others. For example, they have a great product and development team, but can’t market or get traffic to the website. Or they can get traffic, and sell, but experience high churn (customer drop-off) because they lack skills in the product design and usability area.

All companies need a balance, and the primary focus may change from company to company, but here’s some thoughts to consider while thinking about your development, sales & marketing.

Development Focus

• Listen to the tone of the customer feedback. Don’t just add features and think ‘Problem solved!’, rather understand the customers real problems and resolve them compassionately with not only a feature focus, but also a usability focus. Realise that real people have to sit down for hours each day to use your software, so consider human interaction when adding feature.
• Always look for ways to improve usability and speed and here’s a good tip for ideas. Don’t make assumptions, talk to the customers who use your software every day.
• Look for ways to reduce technical support (install wizards, setup guides etc) as this will free up developers time to focus on new developments, products or releases.
• Look for ways to reduce user support. Create a searchable, built in knowledgebase for example. Every time a developer (or support staff) answers a support issue, add it to the knowledgebase.

Sales Focus

• Focus and plan your sales funnel! Don’t give equal attention to all sales leads. Have a method or system sort out the hot leads and focus on those.
• When selling, consider the size of the lead you’re selling to. Ie: Don’t spend 3hrs (emails) and 2 hour long teleconferences selling to a $15p/m lead. These leads should sell them self, automated, online. You should choose from the hot leads, the larger companies and spend the most time converting those leads.
• A lot of time is wasted and conversion rates drop when salespeople don’t realize the person who signed up for the demo isn’t the decision maker. So the ‘customer’ seems to be loving the product and one day the deal fizzles! What happened was you were demo’ing to a project manager when you should have been getting buy-in from the CEO. So on the bigger deals, understand who writes the cheques and make sure you work towards getting them in the loop. Sell to the decision maker!

Marketing Focus

• Develop a plan to over time reduce marketing spend, not increase it. This way your revenue can go in to other areas or profit margins. For example, spend time money now on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which will deliver natural free traffic over time rather than Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which can scale up traffic, but at an increasing cost.
• Develop a strategy to use social networking to your advantage. This could be a community site, viral video, RSS blog feeds etc. As long as you offer something to the audience of value, this will build to more free traffic over time.
• Think of your marketing approach as ‘What can I offer people’ rather than ‘Convincing people to visit me’. Ie: link and point to other people’s sites. Blog about other businesses, write articles to share, talk positively in forums – help people out with solutions. Have an ‘outward’ focus rather than an ‘inward’ focus. It’ll come back to you tenfold.

Those are just some thoughts to get people going. Feel welcome to comment below if you can think of any more considerations ;-)

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Republishing Note: 
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
——————————
About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com

—————— MORE INFO ———————

Movember (the month formally known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year. At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants known as Mo Bros then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache and along the way raise as much money and awareness about male health issues, in particular prostate cancer as possible. Movember culminates at the end of the month at the gala partés. These glamorous and groomed events will see Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to take home the prestigious Man of Movember title.

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- I quite like the facial fuzz – grows on ya (literally)!

Julian Stone, CEO – www.proworkflow.com

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project, Task & Time Management specialist for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com