’20 Under 20′ – Peter Thiel’s paradigm shift?

I saw on CNBC this week  a 2 part series on Peter Thiel’s accelerator 20 under 20.t This idea lead me last year into a variety of paths in looking at business accelerator and trying to start one focused on sustainability in Colorado called Best of The Best (BOTB) concept. It has not been created yet, but will someday.  Anyhow, there is one more showing on Sunday night (I think 7pm and 8pm MDT) you might want to set the DVR for. It might be worth recording / transferring to tape or DVD for use in helping others understand some of the ideas  (obviously NBC’s production values are going to be higher then we could create) when the time is appropriate. Peter’s model is one of a foundation that is well funded, in contrast to BOTB. They are not taking any equity or IP rights, but I think there are some models for how to run a competition, and examples of what to expect.

• Peter Thiel got headlines last year with his fellowship to skip school – http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/31/fellowship-pays-students-100000-to-not-attend-college/
• He seems excellent at staying in the news constantly. From yesterday – http://techland.time.com/2012/08/16/billionaire-peter-thiels-latest-investment-3d-printed-meat/
• The foundataion – http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=10
• The fellowship website – http://www.thielfellowship.org/
• Here is a write up of his comments at this weeks Fortune’ Brainstorm conference over in Aspen – http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-eric-schmidt-fortune-brainstorm-2012-7

In tripping around looking for this background I found this interesting lecture of his:

This is a class by Peter Theil – who is changing thoughts on education and entrepreneurship
http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/25149261055/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-19-notes-essay

I have not had a chance to look at other class notes of his lectures (yet) but here they are: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup

So what are your thoughts on ‘skipping college’ to go straight into bringing your passion to life?  What are your thoughts on our education system?

I got wound up and wanted to help illustrate the slight change in education costs in asking the question to frame it for conversation.

The housing bubble looks like a statistical abnormality compared to the education bubble.

Here is a graph showing Peter’s point of there is an education bubble:

Or you can look at Bloomberg’s version which shows it relative to the out of control health care cost increases, and housing price increases.  - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-15/cost-of-college-degree-in-u-s-soars-12-fold-chart-of-the-day.html

If you want to see the individual data points and see if the problem is 2 year colleges (or community colleges) or 4 year colleges or combined, the data is listed here from the department of education. Here is a chart mapping out college costs over the last 30 years - http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

SOURCE:U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). Digest of Education Statistics, 2010 (NCES 2011-015),Chapter 3 .

Total tuition, room and board rates charged for full-time undergraduate students in degree-granting institutions, by type and control of institution: Selected years, 1980–81 to 2009–10
Year and control of institution	Constant 2008–09 dollars1			Current dollars
	All institutions	4-year institutions	2-year institutions	All institutions	4-year institutions	2-year institutions
All institutions
1980–81	$7,685	$8,672	$5,526	$3,101	$3,499	$2,230
1990–91	10,518	12,185	6,300	6,562	7,602	3,930
2000–01	13,263	15,843	6,693	10,818	12,922	5,460
2001–02	13,709	16,430	6,888	11,380	13,639	5,718
2002–03	14,161	17,020	7,370	12,014	14,439	6,252
2003–04	14,942	17,855	7,734	12,953	15,505	6,705
2004–05	15,444	18,487	7,935	13,792	16,509	7,086
2005–06	15,780	18,820	7,800	14,629	17,447	7,231
2006–07	16,281	19,423	7,850	15,483	18,471	7,466
2007–08	16,385	19,592	7,744	16,159	19,323	7,637
2008–09	17,012	20,385	8,238	17,012	20,385	8,238
2009–10	17,464	20,986	8,451	17,633	21,189	8,533
Public institutions
1980–81	$5,881	$6,320	$5,023	$2,373	$2,550	$2,027
1990–91	7,625	8,403	5,558	4,757	5,243	3,467
2000–01	9,300	10,609	5,933	7,586	8,653	4,839
2001–02	9,633	11,078	6,189	8,022	9,196	5,137
2002–03	10,021	11,537	6,603	8,502	9,787	5,601
2003–04	10,666	12,312	6,935	9,247	10,674	6,012
2004–05	11,046	12,795	7,139	9,864	11,426	6,375
2005–06	11,277	13,062	7,003	10,454	12,108	6,492
2006–07	11,618	13,457	7,166	11,049	12,797	6,815
2007–08	11,735	13,616	7,073	11,573	13,429	6,975
2008–09	12,256	14,262	7,568	12,256	14,262	7,568
2009–10	12,681	14,870	7,629	12,804	15,014	7,703
Private institutions
1980–81	$13,555	$13,861	$10,663	$5,470	$5,594	$4,303
1990–91	20,693	21,218	14,911	12,910	13,237	9,302
2000–01	26,197	26,795	18,130	21,368	21,856	14,788
2001–02	27,000	27,581	19,064	22,413	22,896	15,825
2002–03	27,512	28,039	20,926	23,340	23,787	17,753
2003–04	28,404	28,918	22,560	24,624	25,069	19,558
2004–05	28,903	29,403	22,500	25,810	26,257	20,093
2005–06	29,006	29,467	22,836	26,889	27,317	21,170
2006–07	29,905	30,409	21,329	28,439	28,919	20,284
2007–08	30,680	31,207	21,988	30,258	30,778	21,685
2008–09	31,532	32,090	22,726	31,532	32,090	22,726
2009–10	31,876	32,475	24,248	32,184	32,790	24,483

¹Constant dollars based on the Consumer Price Index, prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, adjusted to a school-year basis.

NOTE: Data are for the entire academic year and are average total charges for full-time attendance. Room and board were based on full-time students. Data through 1995-96 are for institutions of higher education, while later data are for degree-granting institutions. Degree-granting institutions grant associate’s or higher degrees and participate in Title IV federal financial aid programs. The degree-granting classification is very similar to the earlier higher education classification, but it includes more 2-year colleges and excludes a few higher education institutions that did not grant degrees.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). Digest of Education Statistics, 2010 (NCES 2011-015),Table 345.

Are You Getting Paid Fairly? UBM’s IT Salary Survey for 2012

Those of you working for others, or considering hiring others, probably are interested in what the going ‘rate’ is. How much will it cost to create your eCommerce channel? How much will it cost to maintain my help desk and answer all those questions? How much should I pay my CIO (chief information officer) to herd all the parts of my technology infrastructure to manage my website and more?

Well the short answer is either ‘it depends’ or ‘as much as you want to pay’. But neither is real helpful without context. So I find it helpful to see what other companies are doing with their IT staff and management. In the information management industry UBM has created a long term name for themselves as understanding what is happening in the IT world with their variety of publications including Information Week, and analysis services. Granted their bias is heavily towards enterprise work, but they try to segment their data whenever possible. They have been doing annual surveys for quite a while, and recently their 2012 salary survey came out.

To get your own copy of the survey in PDF go to: here or here  UBM’s form is a quick lead collector with the chance to register for some useful webinars.

The survey is based on over 1,300 responses in large and small organizations, with much slicing and dicing to allow you to see how your staff matches. But it also helps to understand the mindset of employees, and to see how other businesses structure their IT teams. That is part of what I find useful in reviewing the survey and looking at it across the pages. Looking at regional differences and major city compared to a region has some insights as well.

I was most focused on some friends who have vast experiences, but are currently working in the help desk area. Here are some of the insights I collected from the data (all numbers are in thousands of US dollars per year):

• Typically, salaries are 1% or 2% more then last year in information technology after a flat 2011.
• To double your salary – jump from help desk work to management. Help desk is always viewed as the lowest common demoninator, and is paid accordingly low. If you want to increase your pay, look for something ‘simpler’. Or at least something that is labeled differently.
• page 41 – Seattle average staff base $99k vs. Chicago $88k. Seattle is probably offset by higher total package with more benefits and bonus.
• page 43 – Midwest average staff base is $79k vs. Pacific region $92k (after ‘subtracting’ average for Chicago, means that outside of Chicago (all the way north to Kenosha) is way lower.
• page 45 – Manager pay though the swing in higher pay switches in the Chicago dual with Seattle. With Chicago, manager average is $118k for base salary vs. Seattle $110k. This may also incorporate that Seattle may tend to have more ‘working’ programming managers rather then ‘stand alone’ management, creating almost a hybrid rate (lower pay for split duties).
• page 49 – 73% expect 401k match next year.
• page 51 – 48% attended paid company training last year.
• page 59 – shows how many companies that IT people have been at. 29% have worked at 3 or more companies in last 10 years. It is not clear how many have been with multiple companies while sitting at the same desk, but corporate takeovers changed the sign at the parking lot. I once worked for 3 companies in the space of 4 months at the same desk.
• page 82 – less then half have a bachelors degree (or higher). The percentage is even lower if you are in management.
• page 85 – Many people are working in  jobs with companies with annual revenue under $50million – 38% of jobs are with these smaller companies. Not all jobs are enterprise jobs.
• page 87 – 20% of jobs are in companies with less then 100 total employees (total, not just IT).
• page 88 – shows which industries tend to pay the most – in terms of total packages non-profit is lowest. In spite of what Governor Walker says, government is 3rd lowest after education (which is still typically a government job). For those that feel that government employees with defined benefits packages should look at these numbers. This goes against your pension frustration. It infers that government employees are taking a $15-30k cut in pay per year for the better pension. The time value of money is an interesting analysis.  Is it fair or not?  The defined benefits of government positions is in contrast to 75%  of all IT employees expect a 401k program with an employer match on page 49.

Here is some older salary suveys:

•  http://www.informationweek.com/whitepaper/Security/Attacks-Breaches/2010-annual-study-u-s-enterprise-encryption-tre-wp1300468071545?articleID=183000036
• http://www.informationweek.com/whitepaper/Management/Salary-Compensation/2009-it-salary-survey-meager-raises-solid-prosp-wp1240592103568?articleID=75000003&cid=iwk_search_wp_salary%2Bsurvey
• http://www.informationweek.com/whitepaper/Management/Salary-Compensation/2009-it-skills-and-salary-repor-wp1236081331777?articleID=65100003&cid=iwk_search_wp_salary%2Bsurvey
• http://www.informationweek.com/whitepaper/Management/Salary-Compensation/informationweek-u.s.-it-salary-survey-2008-wp1213889413109?articleID=22400033

Of course Salary.com is another great resource for looking at ‘how much it costs’ but this direction is also helpful, with a background in the industry older then Salary.com has been around.

How does this survey compare to your experiences? Do you find any surprises, please share in the comments section?

IRCE 2012 – MONETATE – an multivariate platform for ecommerce site

IRCE2012 held at Chicago’s McCormick Place West on June 5-8, 2012

One of the great parts of a trade show is being able to quickly see trends. Monetate is a single company represents new trends multivariate ecommerce platform optimization.

At IRCE 2012 (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) at Chicago’s McCormick Place this week, I was able to how the cost of computing continually dropping is affecting how we merchandise (1st on line, but you know the wisdom will be carried to bricks and mortar stores as well).

One of the booths I got to see was monetate. What stood out for me was how much computing is being done in real time and in an anticipatory fashion. In essence they are taking your shopping cart system (which may, well is probably, very large) and creating variations of it for all sorts of testing. They can test by what city you come from, or if it is raining today. They can test or present based on your past history with you or how close you are to a Walmart. They can compound testing if you are a repeat customer on a rainy day in a media market that is inexpensive.

Monetate from Pennsylvania

Watching the monetate’s demo, and remembering their presentation, I am reminded of when I used to run scenarios on large multimillion dollar data centers, and forget to limit the sample size to ‘reasonable number’. I would get my manager bringing my report the next day (reports only printed a few times a day, but when you busy the machine all night it takes a while) showing me the chargeback of the mainframe’s cost that exceeded both my and my manager’s cost for a year.  Monetate’s system lets me create those scenario experimentation on an ongoing basis either as test or production – in real time.

What I see here is the magic of being able to move as much computing power to SaaS before the web customer shows up. It also is able to quickly identify what the identity of each visitor is.  This allows responding much more like a human store clerk would. Making many decisions with ease because once you know the ‘rules’ they are easy and ‘obvious’. A store clerk seeing a visitor show up on a long skateboard is probably more interested in snowboarding then ski’s or toboggans. A customer wearing a $2,000 watch is probably not looking at the costume jewelry in the corner of the store. These snap judgements are what allow us to determine which of the thousands of cars we pass on our way to work will be a problem, and which are just going along. It is a wondrous marvel of evolution to survive in the complex world we live in. And computers can just do a fraction of it.

We have been trying to get computers to have this same ‘artificial intelligence’ for decades. And we are still a long way from it. But increasingly, we are able to in small domains define experiments that let us test and tweak what is the best way to present information or experiences for website visitors that meet their needs on their terms. Monetate is helping that become incredibly easier for online shopping.

One of the other keys I see in monetate (and similar tools), is the ability embrace Lean Startup methodology. The concept of iteration. The key is understanding that now  that it your cost of experimentation is lower then analysis, the approach that is lowest cost in optimizing is different. When each computer batch run cost thousands of dollars and days of time, it was far more effective to spend more time ‘bench testing’ ideas. Sitting around and using human power to determine the best approach. But when a computer can now not only check your theory, but create a method to retest against different data (be it Texas visitor over Oregon visitor, or this months customers over last quarters customers), it is poor use of resources (especially human) to think about what the results are and ‘just do it’. Let the system or computer or software do the testing and provide the results.

The challenge will be not in saving the last CPU cycles to run one more test, but how to let our creative juices loose again to see how to continually improve the solutions we are trying to build. One of the big challenges for many in ‘corporate’ is to understand that website visitors are individuals. They need to as much as possible be treated as individuals. As we learn to look at our visitors has having different mindsets, often determined by factors we can identify, we will be able to create better experiences for our customers.

There is a whole other dimension of visitor privacy that enters into this, but I am not going to tackle that one today.

As usual, monetate’s solutions are an incredible toolset that lifts one burden from the ecommerce manager allowing a much larger responsibility to rise to the top –  Looking at the world from the customer’s perspective. It was never not the top, but now there are a whole fewer number of excuses as to why we cannot focus on the customer’s view point.

What would you test on your website, if there were no limitations?

IRCE 2012 – Logistical Tools like Refund Retriever

One of the great parts of a trade show is being able to quickly do the ‘who are you and why should I share my secrets’ dance. On the phone, it seems to take forever. In email it feels like you never get real trust and open communication. And websites always feel distorted from the reality of what really happens at a company.

At IRCE 2012 (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) at Chicago’s McCormick Place this week, I met Brian Gibbs of Refund Retriever. One of the many logistics services company looking to assist businesses in the ecommerce channel. As you may guess Refund Retriever audits your shipping bills with FedEx and UPS.

One of the takeaways for me at trade shows is learning what you should be concerned about in your business. If there is a business performing a function, there is a good chance it is an issue that should be looked at. If you are shipping and don’t know your costs, it seems logical that you are not paying attention to a major cost center. While UPS and FedEx have incredible world class IT systems, there are still incredible number of hands in the system that can make mistakes. The amount of speed means that mistakes can and do happen. That is OK is there a need to audit?

What does become clear is that all businesses need to spend at least a few minutes looking to see what if they could improve their shipping costs, or reduce their error rate, or improve on time delivery. All of these can be improved by improving correct addressing. So while not the core of Refund Retriever, it is an idea to consider.  So here are the different ways Refund Retriever will look at your invoices:

• LATE DELIVERIES (GSR)
• BOGUS ADDRESS CORRECTIONS
• RESIDENTIAL vs. COMMERCIAL SURCHARGE MISTAKES
• INCORRECTLY WEIGHED PACKAGES
• UN-SHIPPED/UNINVOICED PACKAGES
• DUPLICATE INVOICES or CHARGES.

But there is also the question of auditing your bills in the 1st place. Most services do it on a split of the refund, so the cost to your business to keep UPS and FedEx ‘honest’ is not a cost to you but a savings. Typically the auditors will use your account information to review your information online to perform the audit. Refund Retrievers is different from other auditors in that they are more focused on the low hanging fruit of just these two vendors. As a result they are better able to work with smaller ecommerce concerns. There is no minimum, since their model uses a simple account set up. Other auditors have a lot more effort in getting set up for each company that affects overall price. I have not had a chance to use them yet, but will be curious to see how they actually perform. Additionally, they have helped me in understanding what I should be doing on my shipping auditing by who ever I use internally or externally to manage my customers satisfaction.

 

Another perspective to look at for every business, is how would a service affect the customer. In this case, I would suggest that for every error caught, to pass on the savings directly to the customer. Lets face it, you really did not loose anything, your customer did. I would send a gift and or a refund to every customer that did not end up with the excellent service you intended when you shipped your product. Even if the customer did not complain. It is a way to show your customer that you care about them, not their money and orders.  When you care about your customers, they will be far more likely to care about you.

So what do you think, is there value in auditing your vendors to keep them on the straight and narrow?

IRCE 2012 – Global Response

One of the great parts of a trade show is being able to quickly do the ‘who are you and why should I share my secrets’ dance. On the phone, it seems to take forever. In email it feels like you never have full partnership.

At IRCE 2012 (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) at Chicago’s McCormick Place this week, I was able to get past the dancing and have much more open conversations with vendors. Sure, we still have secrets. Sure we did not show all our cards. Sure there is still room for negotiations when we get to that point. But, we can start from an understanding of who we are, what we are looking for and how to work in partnership with each other.

Or not. I find a trade show is a great way to see if the message of the booth and the message of the literature and the message of those working the booth match – at least someone gets it. But more likely they are 20 times more likely to be who they say they are.

Global Response passed the test. They are a call center (and contact center) handling inbound and outbound. What I enjoyed in our conversation, was a willingness to share their stories, how they excelled, and where they were not a match. It is always a challenge to ask someone ‘what do you do well’ and the reply is ‘everything’.  1st they probably don’t even understand what excelling in an area is, and 2nd they probably don’t know how broad the industry is. Global did not take this route. They have a three of U.S. based call centers. Points for setting up their 2nd and 3rd one’s in an economically depressed area. But that has turned into a win-win – greater loyalty, happy staff with lower turnover (one of the greatest challenges of any call center) then normal.

Their clientele are a mix of non-profits and larger corporate clients. Their rates are not the lowest for domestic, but seem reasonable. They seem to have a good understanding of one of the keys to a call center relationship being successful – training of the trainer, and ongoing communications. Certainly working in the different modalities of a call/contact center is a challenge.

Different vendors will split on the philosophy of whether to have all modalities in one team or separate teams (phone, email, chat, social media). The challenge is do you train 3 or 4 teams on a product/service line with members that specialize in best practices of each modality? Or is the best way to have one team of superstars (hopefully) that need to learn all four modalities, and juggle appropriately?  This becomes a nuanced discussion with a larger project/volume. But becomes very key for smaller contact center volume, where having multiple teams for low volume can really throw the numbers off.  Global has chosen to go with modality teams (one for phone, one for email/chat) for each project.

Of course how you handle shared resources as an adjunct to this can help with the compromises in either choice (single team per client or single team per client and modality).  Global Response seems like a good candidate for a RFP request for contact center where domestic service is appropriate.

I could go more into how to best choose a contact center, but I will let Global Response’s list be a fair starting point in this changing and flattening world where technology is changing the game economics quarter by quarter.

What to look for in a call center/contact center

IRCE 2012 – BoldChat from LogMeIn (review from Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition tradeshow)

Another review from what I discovered at IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) tradeshow in Chicago, IL.

One of the more interesting solutions I found for eCommerce sites was from one of my favorite SaaS providers – LogMeIn. They have been providing great remote access for my remote support needs, as well as for many clients. LogMeIn is an easy solution to implement – a quick client based program, and you have the ability to access your (or your clients) computer from any current browser. It handles multiple monitors and has multiple layers of security. They have different levels of product from Free (really free) to enterprise.

LogMeIn has introduced BoldChat (they may well rename or at least redo the logo which looks like 3 different words) as a low cost chat solution, a midrange solution and an enterprise solution to go up against LivePerson.

The low cost option is Free - http://boldchat.com/free-live-chat-software.asp. Can’t beat that cost, the limitations seem to be reasonable. The biggest limitations are how many chats per month, and how many concurrent sessions are running. This is enough to get most small ecommerce sites up and going, allow them to build those FAQ answers, and design how to organize your resources for prompt response. By the time the number of chats (750 per month) is becomes limiting, the next level should be a no brainer for your organization to fund at less then a fast food lunch is these days.

The basic level is $99 per seat per year or $9 per month. So for less then a Vonnage account, or RingCentral or any other telephony solutions (well maybe Skype can be less) you have a great way to be able to have chat. Complete with a  self documenting solution for building your business into a repeatable solution.

The enterprise level has more features, and does cost less then your typical rent for the desk space and share of a break room for your agent. This level will integrate into SalesForce.com, have predictive messaging, better integration across team members and more reporting. At the enterprise level the mindset is to work more collaboratively as a team across your chat team.

Is it BoldChat or BuildChat or …?

Chat is quickly becoming the expected norm in ecommerce to assist in providing excellent quality service to visitors who want to learn about your product. If you don’t provide enough service on the site, they will take there business elsewhere with the click of a mouse or often with a quick jump in the car. Chat is also an opportunity to see into the customers real needs and questions, rather then having to guess what they are looking for.  This tools allows you to collect real questions (in the way real visitors ask them, not how you think they ask them), and allow you to sculpt your most appropriate answers for re-use.

If you are planning on having relationships with your clients and will be using the Internet, plan on experimenting and testing with chat as soon as possible. It’s useful not just in answering a few questions while juggling another voice call, but also in having a self documenting way to collect answers for your next agents, and sales team members. These can be collected and put into a FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions (a whole other post). That is one of the easier ways to implement the systems approach of Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited of working ON your business, rather then IN your business.

IRCE 2012 – Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition tradeshow at Chicago’s McCormick Place

IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) is over for 2012.

Learning more in person then online

To all who came to IRCE2012, THANKS for visiting Chicago, the local economy appreciated your visit. I appreciated your ideas and the opportunity for networking in my backyard.

My Kinda Town by http://www.stuckincustoms.com

Even after all these years in technology, it still amazes me to see how technology continues to move quickly in a few different directions. So while I will be highlighting some different companies I met or got reaquanted with in the near future here at SEODamian in future posts,  let me share what I see were some major trends here from the show.

One of the big values I find in going to trade shows is the ability to compare and contrast different vendors in the same hour. The challenge with other solutions for comparing (trade journals, industry reviews, analyst reports) is that they often span data that makes comparisons irrelevant. They are X’s last quarter’s version compared to Y’s next quarter’s beta version. You still get the same issue at a tradeshow, but you can typically sniff out the game and get the real scoop on what the 2 companies are at today, and compare to 3 other similar solutions.  Some of the key trends I saw in Internet retailing are:

• Prices are dropping. No big change there, except the rate they continue to drop. Typically not the same product at the same company, but by a new competitor creating most of the functionality of an existing solution and more for a lower price. Be it Chat and chat management (LivePerson look out, LogMeIn and others are looking to eat your lunch), survey tools, Addon’s to Magento (shopping cart platform), shipping auditing (no minimums needed here), affiiliate management, flash sales tools (keep it all in house or partner) and more.
• SaaS is the trend. The cost to distribute code to customers, and deal with your internal data center/stack complexities is too expensive for most tool creators. It is far easier for them to increase staff to keep 1 (or 2) data center up and going, then trying to guess how you (the customer) tried to make your data center secure and how you dealt with your specific legacy issues.  The test bed is far easier to set up (if they are using AWS-Amazon Web Services, it is about 3 command lines to generate ‘another’ test bed). If you as a retailer can’t deal with SaaS or it’s API, look for adding at least one 0 (zero) to your cost in purchase price, and far more in TCO.

• Big data is here. Small startups need a credit card with a few dollars open on it to get a billion dollar data center (Amazon Web Services) to build ‘rock hard’ services. The cost of AWS is low enough that the ability to deal with incredible amounts of data in real-time changes what is being deployed as solutions. This shows up at the consumer level as presorted and pretargeted for their needs, not brood strokes. No longer is confirmation that a card number may be valid a real number good enough. It has to be validated that it belongs as a charge, not reported stolen and has the proper credit limit. 
•  The is no one stop shopping. The amount of tools to run a successful ecommerce site continues to grow. From the need to change pricing rapidly on one or all your SKU’s, to deploying across multiple channels (store, Amazon, eBay, Affiliate, traditional site, Facebook, ShopEngines) you need a collection of tools that is reminiscent of the stacks of apps in the 70′s and 80′s. The big difference, they are best not home developed, and often hosted in and out of house.
• Change is now often measured in weeks and months rather then years for software deployment. If you don’t like what you see today, what a quarter and redo your RFP (Request for Proposal). But monitor the products and community reaction in the meantime.

There was a lot more I saw, but 500 booths is hard to summarize in a few lines, so more to follow in the next posts.

Is Your SEO to Grow Your Start-up? Learn About Angel Investors

Are you trying to develop your site’s SEO because your new business is growing? Are you getting ready to move to the next level with your start-up?

I am constantly trying to see what tools are available to ease my work, and my clients efforts (especially after I set them up for success). I run across a variety of sites that are successful in short-cutting the learning curve. Instead of having to read 2 books, or sit through 5 months of classes or pay $10,000 in consulting fees, there are a plethora of solutions to help you get at least a cursory education on a variety of challenges for start-ups.

Here is another website that I found it has a great deal of wisdom in short nuggets. It is GUST.com, a website that matches investors and start-ups in one place, creating a clearinghouse for entrepreneurs to look for angel investors in a single location. But the nugget that I found that was really valuable was the hundreds of videos that they have as short 1 to 3 minute nuggets of wisdom from those that have been through the trenches before.

A matchmaker for startups and inverstors

These are investors that most often have sat on the entrepreneur side of the table. They have learned the lessons of start-ups. Most often they learned the hard way. They are often boiled down in the way investors talking to many perspective start-ups can grasp most quickly from practice and repetition. The repitition of dealing with many pitches throughout the day, giving the same advice over and over. Their wisdom tends to be in short little nuggets that you can walk away from with your mind clearer and more focused then the cup of coffee you sipped while watching. These might even be good nuggets to put around your management tables to start out at different meetings. It might also be an interesting way to kind of go through and bring in an outside person to lend some advice to some of your conversations/arguments that you and your management team are having as to how to solve a problem. Certainly, they’re not the absolute perfect answer to everything, but I do find some thought-provoking ideas in there that can be helpful in trying to map out your course, and stay on path to growing your start-up.

I know what you think about gust.com, and the idea of looking at short videos for gaining wisdom and keeping your energy level up as you go through the challenging days of marketing your business to the world through search engine optimization.

http://videos.gust.com/video/Knowledge-than-credentials;Staff-Picks

Another Analytics Tool To Understand Your Engagements

http://chartbeat.com/demo/

Here is another analytic tool to consider. It is part of the Microsoft BizSpark portfolio, this SAaS tool provides analytics in a manner different then Google Analytics. This tool is more geared towards looking at all your online channels: Twitter, Facebook, Website, mobile. Designed as a dashboard to scan for action steps next, it has a new look and feel graphic that allows for quick absorption of information. The focus here is on how long visitors are engaged. ChartBeat Analytics is that tool. It can in real time show what your traffic is doing. It will show where it is from (in bound links), what the keywords that are driving traffic to the site, what links are getting visitors to your site and more. This lets you focus on what is working to turn it up, and what is not working, to keep on experimenting. You are experimenting your SEO and site conversion,  are you not?

This tool is another example that it is not just about getting someone to your site, but are they paying attention and engaging on the site. This is the same as someone running in the brick and mortar store because of the shiny display, only to find it does not correlate to the products inside. That user will just turn right back around,, and head back into the next store in the mall. Or the person in the mall that’s just looking for a restroom, and in 10 seconds head to the restroom, does their business and turns around and heads back out. The person didn’t buy anything, and best case your store maybe made a slight impact on him. So the next time they are looking for something like what you have in the store will consider you, probably not. You fooled them once shame on them, but they don’t want to be fooled twice. but it wasn’t a true engagement.  What they are really looking for is not real engagements, and their lifetime value to the store or your website is absolutely minimal because you failed them the first time to match your SEO to your real site.

Analytics are tools that help you understand who your visitors are, and allow you to get a sense of how they perceive your website and what the value is to them.  While it does not ask the question directly, you can infer that if they are staying on the site for longer periods of time, they are often more engaged and more interested in what you have to offer. This indicates a good correlation to your SEO and SEM efforts. Unless of course they just got distracted by a phone call.

 

Are You Looking at Your Website from Your Cusomers Perspective?

Do you understand specifically what your website visitors are looking for or do you only have a generic idea? If you understand what they are specifically looking for to meet their needs, you have a much greater chance of true engagement. When you have true engagement, your odds of a sale increase dramatically, if not today, then on the next visit.

But if you don’t understand how to look at the trends and numbers, you will have a challenging time understanding what your visitors are really looking for.

That’s why retailers count how many people are coming in and how many people are coming out there also counting how many of them are actually purchasing. I have worked with over 100 different retail chains from single store retailer to office supply big box stores. They are counting by the month, day of the week, hour of the day (I know, I installed the counters that go back to the corporate databases with these body counts). They are counting how many of purchasing customers are actually signing up for the e-mail list. They’re counting how many of purchasers are return customers from previous orders. There also counting what is the average amount of each visitor’s spending. Retail stores count the numbers in so many ways you would be amazed. Just like you need to on your website. Your website is not a black box. You need to be paying attention to what’s happening.

If these types of customer engagement don’t make absolute clear sense to you, then I would suggest you go and spend some time and with brick and mortar retailers. Consider even working as a retailer. Learn how retailers convert the looky loo’s into true engagements. Yes we have all been shopping, but look at how retailers work with other customers not just yourself. Learn how retailers try to customize to the needs of each person, not a one size fits all. It is important that you learn how to look through a store or website through the eyes of a customer. It is important that you understand that the customer is always right in their perspective, and how they are looking at the world. And if you don’t understand their perspective, it will be very hard to understand why they’re not buying from you. If that same attitude of understanding is what a potential customer or visitor is looking at when they see a store and their perspective also becomes very useful.

This attitude of looking at your website comes into play in how you design your SEO and SEM. Did you need to present the right kind of signage from the street to get the customer to pull into the parking lot? Once they get inside the store, they need to see what the sign promised is fulfilled. SEO and SEM is about creating it signage from the street. You can fake a man once or twice, but once you do, they will ignore your sign for the rest of their life, because you made them cut across left-hand lane and pull into your parking lot. And they will tell their friends to ignore you or worse. You need to create a good ‘sign’ in your SEO/SEM to attract your visitors into your store. But you also need the sign to be a good indicator of what is in the store.

Just as stores don’t (at least those that survive long term) have the same layout year after year, websites also must evolve and continue to improve based on what works and what does not. This should be done as measured experiments. You can follow the models used in Lean Start-up (Eric Ries) and E-Myth Revisited (Micheal Gerber).  Those experiments need tools like Google Analytics and other tools like ChartBeat. Topics of other blog posts.

Oh, not selling products on your site?  I would place heavy odds that you are selling your ideas – be they the idea that your service is better then someone elses, or your idea is more important then the next bloggers. Remember to look at the website through your visitor’s eyes in the path they took to get to your website, and your pages.