So I guess I’m one of the lucky bloggers who got a “preview” of the big big big news from ClickTale. Looking at the email header (below) I was expecting something like a triple merger Omniture-WebTrends-Coremetrics, for $100billion dollars in cash, funded by the French government and with Carla Bruni as the CEO of the new entity.
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. It was an email from a PhD guy name Tal who happens to be the CEO of the company. Yes, that’s right, this is where we’ve come down folks — take a feature of your product (anything will do, your new logo, a font change, or even form abandonment), put together an email to a few hundred bloggers, with the words “ALERT”, “You can’t break the news”, “There’s an embargo”, and patiently wait for the busy bloggers to bite without doing the research.
And it works. TechCrunch covered the story. And I’m sure many others will too. Now ClickTale dudes: think twice before sending absurd emails like this to a crowd of people who might know what they’re talking about. Form abandonment was first released in 2003 and all respectable analytics vendors have that feature. I know nothing about your product but you don’t seem to know anything about this market.
I don’t expect anyone to be particularly happy about JP Morgan buying off Bear Stearns for $2 a share - with the Fed supporting the transaction with a $30B loan to JP. But what worries me more than anything is this sort of downward spiral the economy is in right now. Subprime crisis, recession looming on the horizon, and a terribly weak dollar.
This type of economic environment directly affects entrepreneurs, because (a) access to capital (VCs or banks) is harder, and (b) customers generally tighten up their budgets and postpone their technology investments till things get better.
I’ve lived through the 2000-2002 technology recession and learned a few lessons. First, cash is king. Startups with soft business models (like advertising) will feel the pinch, and this is the time to nail that business model before it’s too late. Second, it’s not just about surviving the recession. It’s about leaving the recession with a strong position as a company to start growing fast again. Keep investing in your technology. Keep listening to your customers. Keep believing in what you do.
And last, no matter what, good times will come back. And so will future recessions. That’s just part of the game.
Here are a few things I’ve learned working on the product management side for software startups for the last few years… Might be useful if you’re running short release cycles (1-2 weeks) with a handful of engineers working with you.
1) Spec early, spec often. Put down on paper your thoughts as soon as you have a clear idea for how a feature or bug fix should be handled. This will help your engineering counterpart know where the product is going, and minimize the surprises. Also do not hesitate to create updated feature descriptions even if the feature is still being developed, instead of waiting for the final release. The cost of correcting a feature once it’s out is generally high.
2) Minimize disruptions. Product managers are often pressured to interrupt engineering for important bug fixes. 99% of the time it’s a for an impatient key customer or a trial client. When this happens, it’s best to schedule the fix for the next release and focus your cycles on making sure you understand what the problem is, and have a plan ready to deliver to engineering when they are done with their upcoming release. This will maximize the team’s productivity and reduce the number of half-baked features or fixes.
3) Don’t brainstorm with engineering. Brainstorm with clients. Your most productive discussions will always involve a client. Clients pay invoices, engineers don’t. I remember countless meetings where we would discuss for hours about a product issue between the four walls of our conference room, when a simple phone call to a client with a pointed questions could have ended hours of speculation.
4) Put your engineers in a position to be creative. Keep the team up to date on customers and try to articulate clearly to your team what their problems are. Engineers are brilliantly creative at solving problems when given a little bit of context.
5) Learn about your competition by talking to your customers. No amount of online market research will beat the quality of the competitive analysis you’ll get from your existing clients. Your competitors are constantly pitching your customers, with phone calls, emails and elevator pitches. Ask your clients - “who should I worry about, and why”. They’ll tell you.
It’s interesting how view points can change over time. As an hi-tech entrepreneur switching between B2B and B2C opportunities (Fireclick 1998-2005 then Wambo 2006-2007), I got to learn that markets function differently. Consumer businesses seem a little easier to get off the ground, but are highly competitive. Enterprise businesses on the other hand require stronger products, which take longer to develop - but once the initial hurdle is passed things get more predictable.For the last 2 years, Wambo has kept me laser-focused on Web 2.0 applications, social networking and media sharing. I spent a fair amount of time studying the market, innovating, and marketing to the consumer using a mix of viral and search engine marketing. This sharply contrasts with my prior experience at Fireclick, where I never really paid attention to the new wave of innovation led by YouTube and others - sites like Digg, Facebook and even MySpace were complete unknowns to me. I was simply too busy working with eCommerce sites. Gap.com, HSN, Novica, Tower Records - that was my world - far, far away from Web 2.0.
Recently, I’ve taken another look at eCommerce. Called a few of my former customers, looked again at a few of the leading retail sites and ran a few ideas by some eCommerce luminaries. In other words, I’m paying attention again to what’s going on in the world of eCommerce, but with a different approach - an approach we may call Web 2.0.
My first observation is an obvious one. Commerce sites keep getting more templatized and cleaner overall - unlike social networking sites, where personalization and chaos are generally the norm. By contrast, commerce sites appear inhuman and cold. And silent. Makes you feel like shopping at an empty 7Eleven at 5AM on a Sunday morning after a great party with friends.
I would think this issue has a significant impact on user engagement with the commerce site, and eventually, customer loyalty. Let me say this differently. Commerce sites have much to gain by humanizing the shopping experience, I think.
I’m planning on going to eTail 2008 in Palm Springs (February 11-14). I’m hoping to meet interesting people, learn about the latest and greatest in retail technology (Web analytics, online marketing, SEM, etc), and collect feedback on a new idea I’m working on. If you’re around and want to chat/brainstorm/just say hi, send me an email: xavier at liveclicker.com and let’s find a place and time to meet.
I had a nice lunch at Yahoo today. From the outside, it was sort of business as usual but I suspect it’s only a facade. People there are worried about their future. Let’s hope this great company can find its path soon.
(1) It’s not just “my” decision. We have a dozen people working here at Wambo and I am not the one making these decisions.
(2) On the return on investment, including the hours we had to spend deploying the tags, reading the reports, etc, Google Analytics is unbeatable.
(3) We’re number junkies but know where to stop. Multidimensional path analysis, etc are great features but at the end of the day we can boil it down to 4 or 5 KPIs that can be easily computed with GA on a daily basis.
So yes, we use Google Analytics for Wambo.com and we are very happy with it. And to be clear, this isn’t about GA vs Fireclick but more generally, about GA vs any expensive analytics package out there.
I enjoy grabbing a cup of coffee at my local Starbucks once in a while around 8AM in a week day. I live close to a high-school and it’s interesting to see teenagers hangout, interact with each other, etc.
This morning I took my traditional Grande Coffee, Chocolate croissant, and found a chair near a group of loud kids getting ready to cross the street to got to class. I could not understand what they were talking about - too much slang, too much unsaid, etc. In other words: me start to feel old. Can wisdom compensate for that fact of life? It absolutely does.
I wasn’t born here (!)… and took my first English class when I was 11 (!)… at school (!)… in France (!)… So yeah, I consider myself clueless when it comes to proper grammar. For the longest time, I didn’t understand why so many Americans were using “its” instead of “it’s” - “there” instead of “their” - etc… To be honest, I thought it was stylish - worse, I started purposely making these mistakes myself to look “cool”
