What a Web Startup Needs to Know
A great video of Dave McClure at the FOWA London about what web startups should measure and do while growing their business. I like to go over these startup videos to make sure we are not missing out on something or that we could do something better. Also, it is great to see how others are running their businesses and what particular metrics they look at. I want to re-iterate a couple of points made in the video, especially using DeskAway as an example:
Keeping things simple - end users could be non-technical people so make sure you keep features simple. Even if you have a large feature set, make sure they don't come in the way of the user and don't distract them on the main interface. Additionally, have comprehensive help sections and video tutorials to take the user through your app. Better yet, have help videos embedded within the interface of your app.
Measure - We might be guilty of not rigorous measuring, but I can vouch for the fact that the best thing about running a web business is the ability to measure everything - right from how many people came to the site, how many are returning visitors, how many converted to a free plan, how many upgraded and what features do they use the most! Besides Google Analytics (that's what we use) you should create your own internal analytics dashboards to measure other activity related to your business and app. Basically, track everything and see what increases or decreases if you have taken an important decision - like a new marketing initiative or a new feature release.
Remove Features - In order to keep things simple it is important to remove features occasionally (you will know which one to remove if you measure!). We haven't removed a lot of feature yet but if you notice we haven't added a new feature in over a month. That has not affected anything - number of signups, client dropouts etc. So, bottomline, as long as you have your core features intact, you don't need to go ballistic over feature releases. There are a lot of things that you can still improvise on within your current feature-set.
Anyways, if you have read through this much, it's time to checkout this video: Start-up Metrics that Matter by Dave McClure from Carsonified on Vimeo.
