All,
I would just like to announce that a friend of mine, whose mother has ALS, is doing her fourth annual "Walk for Hope". I encourage people to donate and to take part in the walk and the raffle. For those who are unfamiliar with the disease, I encourage you to watch "So Much So Fast" which chronicles a family coming to grips with this heart-wrenching, life-changing ailment.
Charles Forman from iminlikewithyou.com
These are notes from O'Reilly's talk. Clay Shirkey's talk was very interesting (about privacy) but I only did the first half as it was hard to sum up in words and he didn't have a thesis per se. Mostly, what he was saying is that we don't yet have good filtering paradigms for the type of information that has become, and is becoming, available nowadays.
For instance, a college student has setup the dorm washing machines to twitter their availability. The Quake Catcher Network allows macs to be part of a distributed earthquake sensing mechanism. Caty London is using Asterisk to allow a hydration sensor in her plants to Twiter her when they're too dry. Photosynth (Microsoft I believe) allows photos to be made into a melange that allow synthesized images. Whirl (and brightkite) allows users to collaborate based on location (from iPhone, etc...).
What makes the phone company different from Google? They both have massive data centers, data gets better, data from customers. In a Web 2.0 world, real time user-facing services based on that data - that's not available on the phone network. Dell has set up 'Ideastorm' to get users. But they actually are web 2.0 from the start. Users would request different components and that would impact the purchasing of the company at large. This is unlike the previous PC companies that pretty much forced a premade model to the user with little user input (except the purchase itself).
For the enterprise, going 2.0 involves letting users into the back office, turning the company inside out. Let the users influence how the company acts.
Are we living in a bubble? Not an investment bubble, but a reality bubble? The 'best and brightest' are working on witty Facebook apps and beer drinking games on iPhone. In business, 'scenario planning' is a tool used to come up with possible outcomes. Unfortunately, it's hard to anticipate all the possible scenarios. In order to do scenario planning, you start with boundary conditions and then come up with strategies that make sense even at either side of the presumption box.
What's important is to create more value than you capture. This is an ethos at O'Reilly. Our new Pascal's Wager is that we have to presume that things won't work out. We need to presume that and strive for better, not just assume that things will be better.
InSTEDD is using collective intelligence to isolate diseases. Ushahidi is using mobile phones to coordinate disaster response in Africa. The Berlin Airlift moved 2.3M tons on 277K flights, one landing every 2 1/2 minutes, 24 hours a day for 15 months, planes unloaded by local residents - volunteers -10 tons in 10 minutes. It developed the modern air traffic control system even. Benetech is another technology company helping people. The Omidyar Network funds profit and non-profit companies. Google.org is now in a partnership with GE on clean energy. AMEE is trying to make an open source framework for carbon trading. Click Diagnostics is using cell phones for medical diagnostics for the rural poor.
Organizations have to have 'big, hairy ideas'. We must use the web to make a better world. We must fight greater beings - if we lose, we lose decisively but we are changed. The allegory relates to Jacob fighting an Angel on his way back to his homeland and his brother Esau. After that fight, he became Israel and was made anew.
Clay is talking about data overload. Everybody's been talking about it though. Is it really the same story from the last 15 years? Is this a surprise? Isn't information always growing? Gutenburg, with movable type, injected information abundance. By the 1500s, the cost of producing a book became low enough that finally, an average citizen could own more books than could be read in a lifetime. He also introduced the problem of publishing risk. One had to print before selling and hope that people buy. The solution is that the publisher had to be choosy about what gets produced. Since then, publishers had two roles - printing a copy of something AND choosing what to print. The Internet, for the first time, challenged that by making the cost of production extremely cheap. Nonetheless, the overload is still a problem. The past always looks like easy street with less data and the future looks crushingly full of data. Facebook and other paradigmatic, structural challenges to information mobility, require new forms of filtration that don't yet exist.
Joshua Porter (bokaro.com) gave a great presentation this morning at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York today.
Getting people to sign up on a site or app is difficult - there's a natural 'friction' that keeps people from signing up.
Real sign-up numbers from real companies:
Usability is of course one of the main factors affecting the sign-up rate. Gmail for instance has correct tab order, they end with "@gmail.com" so it's clear to the user what they're creating with a login name. Checking availability is also possible without a full submit. The password box tells the restrictions (6 characters) and check immediately. Security questions can be a real burden for people who are new to sign ups. Other questions like location also deter. "Letters are case sensitive" means very little to the common user. In other words, Gmail does a great job but not a perfect job.
Boston.com forces one to fill out virtually all fields. They do tell you what to do right on the page but the number of unnecessary data points becomes a burden - people don't want to put in what their job is just to get the paper. Instead of saying to the user, "We are using this info to customize the paper/ads for you", they say nothing. Even after all that, they want the user to sign up for newsletters and then for information from advertisers.
Improving the use of forms involves
But ... These issues are not 'sign-up'. Sign up is in the mind. Apathy is what drives people to not sign up. Are they motivated enough by what you're offering to care about filling out the form? "If ease of use were the only requirement, we would all be riding tricycles" (couldn't read the author).
"Eager Sellers, Stony Buyers" is a great article on buying. If you are a current user of software, you typically overvalue it by a factor of 3. If you are software maker trying to sell software by a factor of 3. They actually think it's 3 times better than it actually is. This is called the 9x effect whereby somebody who is already bought-in will experience a 9x overvaluation of the product when the seller is presenting it to them.
What we're asking of the user with sign-up isn't just to fill out a form, it's also asking somebody to change their behavior, give up accepted practices, jump into the unknown, trade known quantity for an unknown, and a "shift from potential to kinetic energy".
When you are the product creator or represent that company, you know much more about the product than the user who you're attempting to convince. We need to design for 3 visitor types.
Geni.com has a great signup by having the user put the father's name and mother's name right into the signup form (they're a geneaology site). Immediately, this explains the purpose of the information and gets buy-in.
Netvibes.com is another site. If you haven't been there before (no cookie), you'll get an intro right off the bat. If you've been cookied (but not a member), you'll get more of the end information without the intro information. Another concept is that once you've created a page, there is a sign that says, "Don't lose your page, become a member now." That is superior to just 'Sign Up'.
Instant engagement is the first and most important thing. Show them what they're getting, don't describe or tell them.
Netflix is another great example. The main page tells you everything right there. "Sign up today and try Netflix for FREE!" with a whole bunch of other follow-up content and the form is right there. In addtion, at the bottom, they give 4 tiles with the entire process of dealing with the company: Pick movies, get movies in mail, no late fees, drop movie in the mailbox. This simple explanation is critical. The copy uses words like "your" to show that this is how you deal with the system and "we" so it's clear who is responsible for what. If none of that works, in the lower right there's a phone number and chat link for people that want more information.
Tripit also has a 3 pane design showing how it works. They don't even ask for people to sign up off the bat. Just have people forward the emails from Orbitz and that's how they start the sign-in process. Movies and screencasts are also available - another great design element for this issue.
I won't go into the details about these sites that are poorly done: BillMyClients.com. In a redesign, it's even worse. The login is right on the home page but people who don't know how to get a login or what the site does don't know what to do. The login is best put in the top right. Also, the copy is really miserable - "Get a free email ..." The visual hierarchy is completely wrong. Blinksale.com, which does essentially the same thing has a much better sign up page (I think I'll have to check them out for invoicing).
Social Influence is the final piece of the sign up process. Basecamp does a great job with tons of testimonials from large brand publications and tastemakers and 'normal' people. Jaiku and Twitter make it real obvious that the whole world is on this, now, using it. Get press coverage on the web site.
In fine, motivation is everything.
Right now I'm at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York (The summit in San Fran is too expensive even though I was able to snag an invitation). The speakers are Charlie O'Donnell from Path 101 and Albert Wenger at Union Square Ventures. Charlie is very much a networker, talks about having a thousand (real) connections on Linked In. He seems like a nice fellow that believes in extreme openness (i.e. anti-stealth). I definitely agree with his thinking on this.
Albert says to do a convertible note with no valuation for angels. Also, do not give out more than 20% equity to angel investors otherwise it will be very difficult to raise any future money. VCs are going to want 20% at least and VCs don't want to end up in a majority shareholder position because they don't want to actually run the business and the goal is to get the entrepenuer working hard for cheap - which only happens if they have alot of equity.
Albert also says to not presume that 'strategic' investors will actually be strategic - these relationships are usually founded on a hope of working together but then the major C-level executive who signed over the money in the first place usually has alot of other stuff on their plate. It's great if you can get that money, but don't think too much of it. Also, strategic investors may scare off future investors if those future investors are in competition with the initial strategic investor - that could cause problems from both sides.
Charlie says that pro rata rights (the ability for investors to increase their investments) are good, and most VC funds don't mind that for smaller initial investors. The problem is if too many people have it, then it becomes a burden to get everybody to sign over their rights on the next round.
Albert is passionate about knowing that the team will need to be upgraded as the company grows. Different types of people are needed for working on a small team of 3 versus a larger 15 person organization. Founders often get forced out when they don't realize this and find a way to get people moved around as the company changes.