How original product ideas can kill your small business

January 4th, 2010 11 Comments

Well this is a bit of a controversial idea but I’m a firm believer that original products and ideas for original products can be an accident waiting to happen… let me explain… actually it’s not really the idea for an original product that’s dangerous, it’s the fact that very often an established market does not exist for your product.

If you’re a small business start-up and you’re not planning on being the next Facebook (see my previous post for why you shouldn’t be trying to be the next Facebook) then you absolutely must have an existing market of people you can sell your product to. 

If you’ve created an entirely original product and if an established market doesn’t exist for you to easily enter then how are you going to get your product in front of people who want to buy? 

In a lot of cases they might love your product but if a market doesn’t exist for you to easily market to then they’re not even going to be looking for your product to solve their pain and therefore no sales. You simply must have an existing market for your product.

Let me illustrate this with an example…

In 1999 we released a software product that converted most document formats (Word, Excel, Quark, etc…) to HTML web pages so businesses could publish manuals, legal documents, charts, DTP documents etc to their Intranet or their web sites.  For 3 years we sold a good number of products but the marketing was horizontal and without a niche.  Then in 2002 we added PDF conversion capabilities to the software… this gave us a complimentary (massive, existing) market to push our tool into and the HTML conversion capability provided an excellent unique benefit that set us apart from the competition.

Suddenly we were growing about 20 – 100% per month for the following 2 years!  Wow I wish we’d known this when we started!

The point I’m trying to illustrate is that the original idea we had for an HTML converter was great and the tool really useful, but we didn’t have an easy way to get the product in front of potential customers that was within our budget.

Of course if you’ve got a sizable budget or you have VC (yuck) then this advice can be ignored and you have enough money to create a market if your product is good enough.

If you’re a small self-funded or revenue-funded business then I hope you can learn from our mistake… it’s a key part of the Success Recipe that is vital to small business success.

Read More »

Startups and Google – Scary Stuff?

December 22nd, 2009 18 Comments

Well I just heard Bob Walsh’s latest Start-up Success Podcast #48 interviewing Don Dodge (previously Microsoft’s Start-up Evangelist and now in a similar position at Google) and I must say I’m quite scared!  Let me tell you what I think this means for microISVs and start-ups:

  • Developer Programs - When asked about developer and start-ups programs Google may be planning, Don stated that as such there really aren’t any and that they were having meetings regarding a developer certification program!  To me that sounds like we’re going to have to pay to get a certification – who wants one anyway… just give us the tools and the help we need to create great apps.
  • Google Marketplace – Don mentioned the strong possibility of Google creating a Google App Marketplace.  When asked what the charge would be, Don said it would be something like the 30% Apple charge or a little less.  That’s simply ludicrous!  In building on Google’s platform, developers are adding value to Google and Google users and increasing eyeballs on Google so to charge for this is plainly wrong.  Apple can get away with it because they control the platform… wake up time Google.

Google plan to charge 30% (or a little less) for Apps sold in their Google App Marketplace.

One of the worst things I heard and something that I believe is conflicting is that Google provides the #1 source most microISV and start-ups earn 70% of their income (by way of organic SEO results).  Now, Don on the other hand is the "developer evangelist" at Google and says they are "very serious" about making 2010 a big year for us… how can he say that when through recent changes to their search results (real time results mixed in etc) they have drastically affected SEO results (for the worse) and plan on doing more of this?  This has negatively affects start-ups worldwide.

Google now makes it easy for users to make the decision not to visit our websites.

Search uses are displayed a thumbnail preview of our sites, which may not even show what is important on the homepage.  While I agree that better search results like this are important, Google has to be up front and provide start-ups support and advance notice of this type of disruptive change.

Wake up #2 – Google, if you are trying to make 2010 the year of the start-up then try talking to us.

Is it a case of give with one hand and take with the other or do Google really make good on their "Do No Evil" slogan?  I’m leaning towards "Do No Evil" camp but I’d like for my mind to be changed.

Please comment on this, we as start-ups need to make our voices heard and show the big fish how they can really help us.

Read More »

How to find Silverlight Control’s Default Styles

December 11th, 2009 30 Comments

We’ve been working on an application using Silverlight 4 Beta 1 and we came across a problem when we wanted to style the new RichTextArea control.  We wanted to remove the border in all instances so we could make a nice in-place edit control for rich text.

Well as it turns out this is very easy to do (see our next post for the full XAML code)… But we did have one problem – how to find the default style of the RichTextArea control since it hasn’t been documented yet and we didn’t have time to download and install Expression Blend 4 Preview (which can show the styles).  We need to know the default style so we can easily copy and paste them and then customize them.

Turns out there is an easy solution at hand that involved the user of .NET Reflector, which is an awesome product by the way and if you don’t already have it in your toolbox then you should get it now.


Step 1

Open .NET Reflector, click the “open” button and open the following assembly:

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Silverlight\4.0.41108.0\System.Windows.dll

image

 

Step 2

Expand the System.Windows item in the tree the expand the Resources folder and finally select the System.Windows.g.resources item.  In the right-hand window you should see an entry called themes/generic.xaml.

image

 

Step 3

Right-click themes/generic.xaml and in the popup menu select Save As and save the generic.xaml file to your desktop.  Then simply drag-and-drop generic.xaml into Visual Studio or any other XML viewer to get access to all the control’s styles which are in this file (including RichTextArea etc).

image

 

That’s all there is to it – Silverlight stores all the default styles for controls in this generic.xaml file so it’s a great time saver knowing where to find them.

Leave me your feedback and comments, I’d love to hear if you have a better way of doing this or other suggestions.

Read More »

What is Awesome Help?

December 1st, 2009 No Comments

Simply put definition: Awesome help is help that your customers want to use, they get immediate value from it – It answers their questions and educates them whilst making them happy.  Awesome help puts puts your customers first and in return they send their business to your company instead of your competitors.

Why do I need Awesome Help?

Awesome help and support mean happy and engaged users which means more business.  If you’re not focused on customer support first you’re going to lose customers to your competitors.

What Awesome Help is not ?

Awesome help is not:

  • a user guide or a manual.
  • something your customers have to read from front to back.
  • something that does not put your customer first.
  • written by a technical writer who has no contact with customers.
  • written prior to product launch.
  • hard to create.

How can I create Awesome Help?

Creating awesome help is not difficult and you already care about your customers (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, right?). 

If your company has a big focus on providing awesome support to your customers then providing awesome help is an extension of that.

We’ll show you through this blog how you can create help that your customers will want to use.  Help that your customers want to use is a resource that will keep on giving to your company:

  • Great support means happy customers and happy customers means more business.
  • Awesome help is search engine friendly and will send qualified traffic to your business for free.

In today’s web and socially connected world, if your not making your customers happy they’ll leave and take their business to your competitors. Providing awesome support is core to creating small business success for your products these days and we’ll show you how to do that quickly and easily.

Who are we?

What makes us qualified to talk about awesome help and support?  Good question…

We’re a small group (we fit in a mini-bus!) who run a software company.  We started in 1999 and back then you could get away with a good product and poor support – in fact, it was normal to do so.  As time has passed we’ve build our products and sold them to over 100,000 paying customers world wide and we’ve noticed a slow but steady change…

Technology has changed everything and customers are starting to be put first… This is brilliant… This combination means the little guy (like us and you) can compete with the big guys and win. 

There are numerous examples over the last few years of successful small guys, one has become a poster child – 37 Signals have become a leader in the online software-as-a-service market.  They have accomplished this by being awesome and putting their customers first.

What’s the next step?

  • Stay tuned to this blog and subscribe to our feed.
  • Become customer focused (put them first).
  • Start making your customer support a top-priority.

We’ve got a ton more to come so check back soon or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Go on, leave us a comment, we’d love your input and we’ll respond to you!

Read More »
Newer Entries »
Subscribe to RSS Feed Follow us on Twitter!