Imagine a tool that would identify potential flaws in your website that could make you dominant over your competition?

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We are currently using [...]]]> Imagine finding an online tool that would score your website in its marketing outreach and potential?

Imagine a tool that would identify potential flaws in your website that could make you dominant over your competition?

Look no further as now you can see what your website’s JiniScore by going to Jiniscore.com.

We are currently using this awesome tool to help us with our clients marketing efforts as it saves us a ton of time.

Currently it is in beta stage but take a look at it if you get a chance

Many brick and mortar business owners are used to paying for a service and measuring results on the short term. But that’s not the way it [...]]]> Done well, however, search engine optimization is a very powerful, cost effective channel. A steady flow of new visitors will arrive for years after your initial investment is made.

Many brick and mortar business owners are used to paying for a service and measuring results on the short term. But that’s not the way it is with search engine optimization. In fact, some of your most important benefits could come months after the end of an search engine optimization campaign. That makes it difficult to measure the true results if you are an instant gratification thinker. Veteran business owners, of course, are typically not those kinds of thinkers.

SEO is a powerful force. Different companies require different strategies. GA good SEO starts with your own website and analyzes what you’ve done. A good SEO company should look for those things you’ve done right. Those are the things you don’t want to change. But the SEO company that will earn your investment back should be able to fill in the gaps between those areas you’ve done well. And if it does that and you see an increase in traffic from the efforts, you can say the SEO company has done its job.

SEE OUR PACKAGES

Getting traffic to your website is only half of the battle. The other half is getting them to stay long enough to complete a positive action which in most cases is to generate a sale.

Do you use any type of site statistic [...]]]> How long do people stay on your site when they get there?

Getting traffic to your website is only half of the battle. The other half is getting them to stay long enough to complete a positive action which in most cases is to generate a sale.

Do you use any type of site statistic tracking on your site? If not we can have one installed for you which will tell you how your site is doing and will set up bench marks

There are positive responses you should look for and examples of a positive response would be subscribing to your newsletter, clicking on a pay per click ad, filling out a lead form, bookmarking your site, subscribing to your RSS feed if you have a blog, going to another page on your site, buying something, contacting you by email for more information, and so on.

These are all things that someone could do while they’re on your site that would be considered a positive response. This also increases the amount of time that they spend on your site.

Okay here are the 9 ways to increase how long they stay.

1. Offer only fresh content. If your content is interesting a person will spend more time reading it.

2. Make your site interesting by adding video, audio, graphics, and so on to liven it up a little bit.

3. Remind your visitors they can print out content on your website. While it’s printing it gives them an opportunity to look at other things on your site.

4. Encourage visitors to participate in a survey in exchange for a free gift. Once they complete the survey send them to another page on your site where they can access the freebie.

5. As opposed to sending your visitors to affiliate web pages, create a file with a redirect name to another page of your own. You will get credit for another page view and the time a person spends on your site will increase.

6. Pay attention to how fast your site loads. If your pages are not loading fast consider what is slowing them down and change it.

7. Make sure your website is professional in every way. This includes the text that you are using on your pages. You should use proper grammar and spelling as that will make your site look professional.

8. Brand yourself in every way so that as a visitor goes from one page to the next they always feel like they are still on your site.

9. Try to be unique and come up with content that supports it. There are millions of sites out there, how are you different?

These are 9 ways increase how long a visitor stays on your site. By keeping your visitors around longer you increase the odds of having a positive response from more of them and thus will be more successful.

Please contact us at 2levelsAbove.com and we will be more than happy to assist you with your site popularity needs. We have been doing it for years.

The answer to this is, “It depends.” It depends on whether you care about growing your business or not. If you want your business to grow and succeed, then yes, you need a Web presence and you need people to be able to find you on the Web. The web IS THE WORLD!

I just got back from Y Combinator Demo Day, Summer 2008.  For a startup fanatic like me, it’s hard to imagine a more fun use of a few hours.  I got to watch 20 back-to-back, rapid-fire startup demos. 

Here are some of my initial reactions and thoughts on the newest cohort of YC startups.  [...]]]>

I just got back from Y Combinator Demo Day, Summer 2008.  For a startup
fanatic like me, it’s hard to imagine a more fun use of a few hours.  I got to
watch 20 back-to-back, rapid-fire startup demos. 

Here are some of my initial reactions and thoughts on the newest cohort of YC
startups.  Note: Like most OnStartups articles, this article focused on the
entrepreneurial perspective (not the investor perspective).  The folks that
should (hopefully) get the most out of this are the YC startup founders
themselves.

Notes From The Y Combinator Summer 2008 Demo Day

1.  Best Cohort Yet:  Overall, in my (highly subjective)
opinion, this is the best batch of YC startups yet.  I think I have a bias
(which has been tempered over time) for startups that have demonstrated some
thinking around things like monetization and revenue, and that might be
influencing my thinking.  The current cohort, on average, seemed to have a
stronger emphasis on not just making something people want, but something that
will yield revenue, and (gasp!) profits.  Good stuff.

2.  Presentations were better than what I’ve seen in the
past.  More fluid, more polished, more effective.  My hat’s off to all
the YC startup founders that presented today.  You guys did a great job!  Having
said that, it’s not a totally fair comparison.  You guys do have the advantage
of many more YC founders before you that you can learn from.  I’m guessing that 
Paul, Jessica and the rest of the YC crew are also getting better and better at
nudging you in the right direction when it comes to Demo Day presentations. 

3.  Tip:  Use your precious minutes:  The Y Combinator team
did a great job keeping things moving, and I think the format of Demo Day works
well (6 minutes per presentation, no audience questions).  One quick tip for the
presenting team:  If you are doing the presenting, you should begin with your
message even while your team member is setting up.  Don’t wait for the
slide deck to come up on the screen.  Don’t shift the focus to your buddy who is
switching out the cabtes and stuff.  Don’t wait.  Just start delivering
your message.  In your preparation, come up with introductory
remarks that don’t rely on your first slide being up yet.  When you only have a
precious few minutes, 30 seconds counts.

4.  Don’t use gender stereotypes:  This one’s going to be a
little touchy.  A few of the startups today used examples and screenshots that
were um, a little too “gender-stereotypical” (that’s a semi-polite way of saying
they were too far down the spectrum towards being sexist).  I can understand and
appreciate that most of the YC founders are young males in their 20s.  But, my
advice would be to resist the temptation to use scantily clad women in
demos.  It’s both inappropriate and sub-optimal.

5.  Answer the question you know people are asking
themselves:  Once you start doing presentations a lot, you begin to
realize that there’s a “pattern” to the kinds of quesitons people have in their
heads.  The same themes recur.  Do what you can to make it as difficult
as possible for people to dismiss you because they’ve got that one big
“obvious” question/objection/whatever.  For example, I thought the Fliggo team did a smart thing by closing with
this nugget:  “I know you’re asking yourself, how are these guys going to make
money…I’m glad you asked…”.  You don’t necessarily have to answer the “how do
you make money” question (though that’s not a bad thing), and you don’t even
have to frame it as a quesiton.  Just try and address the most obvious things
people are likely to wonder about.

6.  Tip:  If you’ve got traction, share it earlier in the
presentation:  There were several startups that had pretty impressive
early traction (like users and revenues).  They didn’t talk about this until
later in the presentation.  I’d suggest possibly getting this message out
earlier in the presentation, because it will grab people’s attention
and cause them to listen more intently to the rest of your story.  Imagine an
opening sentence that is something like this:  “Hi, we’re XYZ.  We launched just
a few weeks ago and we’re getting some encouraging early evidence that we’ve
built something people want…Here’s what we’ve learned from our 14,000 users…”. 
I’m not suggesitng you use that exact sentence, just a thought.  When dealing
with investor types, remember that folks have short attention spans and you’re
best served by grabbing them as early as possible with
something they care about. 

7.  Memorable sound-bites are not just for TV:  I’m
generally not a big fan of over-preparing for presentations (more often than
not, sounding natural is more important than sounding polished).  Having said
that, some clever, funny, well-crafted sound-bites thought of in advance and
added to the presentation are a good thing.  They’re particularly good for
bloggers and media types that might cover you.  For example, the PopCuts folks had this great snippet:  “The
only way to get famous on BitTorrent is to get arrested.”  Simply
brilliant. 

8.  Audience participation/engagement works:  A couple of
the startups were able to work their demo such that the audience was “involved”
in the demo itself.  Although this is hard to do, it’s valuable.   It also helps a
lot when you get audience members to do something (instead of just sit
there and listen). 

That’s all I have for public consumption.  However, I have notes from each of the
presentations.  If you were one of the startups that presented today and want
my quick thoughts or feedback, feel free to email me. 

I just noticed a great summary write-up of today’s event on Scott Kirsner’s
Innovation
Economy blog.  If you’re not yet reading Scott’s blog, you should be.

Best wishes to all the Y Combinator startups.  It was great to see you all
and chat with many of you at the close of the event.  Knock ‘em dead next
week.  In the meantime, some closing advice:  Get some sleep!

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  13,000+ members and growing daily.

You can also find OnStartups on Twitter.

Go to Source at onStartups.com

I have been tracking Y Combinator (a new kind of venture firm for early, early stage startups) for several years.  They have a distinctive approach to the early-stage funding process and have funded some interesting companies.  YC is in the news again because of Google’s recent acquisition of Omnisio, a YC investment. 

Thinking back [...]]]>

I have been tracking Y Combinator (a
new kind of venture firm for early, early stage startups) for several years. 
They have a distinctive approach to the early-stage funding process and have
funded some interesting companies.  YC is in the news again because of Google’s
recent acquisition of Omnisio, a YC investment. 

Thinking back on several years of YC history, I dervied the below list of
companies that I would have funded had I had the opportunity to do so.  I tried not to cloud my judgement with hindsight (that is, I’m not just picking the ones that ended up being successful).  Also,
note that these are not what I think to be the best YC companies — just
the ones that I’ve thought about in the past.

1.  Reddit:  I remember the day I first
encountered Reddit.  They were presenting the product at one of the early Web
Innovators Group meetings.  I was still a grad student at MIT at the time, and
went to the meetup with a few of my classmates (we were working on a paper about “Web
2.0” for one of our classes).  Interestingly, Kiko (remember them?) was one of
the other companies presenting that evening.  I’ll be honest and admit that on
the first evening, I didn’t quite “get reddit” (the category of social news was very
new at the time).  But, reddit showed up on my radar pretty quickly a little while later.  I
noticed a bunch of traffic coming to OnStartups.com (this blog) through
reddit.com.  It caused me to take a second look, and I’ve been following them
ever since.  I don’t know Steve Huffman that well (he might actually be even
quieter than I am), but Alexis is about as nice a guy as you can find and has a
weird, quirky creativity that is magnetic.  To build a successful startup, it
helps a lot if people actually like you. 

2.  Xobni:  I met Adam Smith for lunch at a
Thai place in Coolidge Corner (Brookline) a long, long time ago.  Long enough
that it was before the exceptionally talented Matt Brezina joined as
co-founder.  Even back then, I liked Xobni for one simple reason.  It complies
with my notion of “the problem you solve should be ugly, the solution should be
beautiful.”  There are few things less fun to develop these days than desktop
applications for Windows.  It’s ugly.  What’s even uglier is developing desktop
software that has to integrate as a plug-in to something else — like
Outlook.  That’s one ugly problem.  Further, the fact that millions of
people still use Outlook made it in an interesting commercial opportunity. 
Plus, I really like Adam.  He’s super-smart and listens.  [Matt, I like you a
lot too, but I didn’t know you back then and I’m trying to talk about my early,
early thoughts on the company].

3.  Pairwise:  I saw the pairwise guys
present at the YC Demo Day (the big day following months of furious coding
that is the core of the YC experience).  Of all the companies in that cohort
that presented, I liked Pairwise the most.  It appealed to my data-driven nature
and they had something that I felt had commercial opportunity.  More
importantly, unlike many startups, it seemed they were actually
thinking about the “how do we make money” part very early in the
process.  I haven’t kept up with Pairwise much since then, and they haven’t
written on their blog since November, 2007 — so I’m guessing things didn’t take
off like they had hoped.  Regardless, I thought the guys were great and the idea
was a good one.

4.  Wufoo:  I’ve been dealing with the
frustration of web-based forms for a long, long time.  It’s a common enough
problem that lots of people try to solve it by creating a “form builder” of some
sort.  It’s an appealing problem to try and solve (unlike what Xobni is doing,
it’s a fun problem to work on).  We even built one as a part of our landing page application at HubSpot (not
because it is fun, but because it is a necessary part of what we do).  Back to
Wufoo.  The thing I like about them is that they are exceptionally good
at the UI/UX thing.  I’m not a designer myself, and don’t play one on TV, but I
know great design when I see it.  I also know how hard it is to do
right and how rare it is to find people that have that gift.  What’s even rarer
is the notion of great UI/UX design talent intersected with a strong business
sense — which the Wufoo folks seem to have. 

5.  Disqus:  Of all the startups from YC
that I’ve seen, I feel like I understand Disqus the best.  Having been a blogger
myself for some time, I get the notion of centralized comments and the
tradeoffs therein.  This is why I met with Daniel Ha — coincidentally, at the
same Thai restaurant in Coolidge Corner where I met Adam Smith.  (Yes, I’m a
creature of convenience and the place is 2 minutes from where I live).  Daniel’s
one of those entrepreneurs that makes a great early impression.  He’s clearly
smart, but also recognizes there’s stuff he needs to learn that’s going to
increase his odds of success.  I like the general notion of Disqus (always have)
and even back then, there was some early evidence that folks were going to use
it.  Disqus is also one of those companies that likely benefits most from an
association with YC and Paul Graham. 

6.  RescueTime:  Tony Wright (the
founder of RescueTime) probably doesn’t even recall this, but he and I first had
online contact years ago.  He reached out to me way back then as a
reader of my blog and reported a problem with the commenting system.  Since
then, Tony and I interact sporadically (mostly through each other’s blogs). 
Tony’s one of those guys that I’d bet on simply because he has an uncanny knack
for how the startup game is played.  Intersect that with an interesting idea
that could get massive appeal, and you have a great startup.

So, there you have it.  6 Y Combinator startups that I probably should have
been more aggressive about investing in.  But, that’s not my style.

My best wishes to all the Y Combinator founders.  Particularly those that are
working away furiously on their products in preparation for demo day coming up
soon.  I hope to see/meet many of you there.

By the way, if you’re not in YC, but you’re a superstar web developer (take 5 minute quiz) and looking for a fantastically fun startup gig, I’m recruiting for HubSpot.  Just drop me an email.  I’m easy to find.

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  13,000+ members and growing daily.

You can also find OnStartups on Twitter.

Go to Source at onStartups.com

You remember 1999, right?  It was the day of the sock puppet and crazy, CRAZY marketing strategies.  By the way, before going too much further, I will confess that I actually bought pets.com shares back in the hey day.  Why?  Because everyone was doing it, and my wife and I thought the commercials was [...]]]>

You remember 1999, right?  It was the day of the sock puppet and crazy, CRAZY
marketing strategies.  By the way, before going too much further, I will confess
that I actually bought pets.com shares back in the hey day.  Why?  Because
everyone was doing it, and my wife and I thought the commercials was creative
and funny.  Granted, my “due diligence” bar was lower back then, but I’d
understand if many of my colleagues would revoke my angel investor license just
for that.

But I digress.  Today’s article is about new ways startups are using to try
and attract attention and — wait for it — eyeballs!  A software company in
Cambridge, MA is running a “viral marketing contest” whereby they are giving
away a total of $50,000 for bloggers, videographers (basically anyone with
a video camera) and others into the “new, new marketing”. 

Here’s the article: 

Insanely
Brilliant or Just Insane?  The HubSpot $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest

Now normally, I’d be having a jolly old time making fun of this startup with
references back to every lame attempt at “marketing” we saw out of dot-com
startups back in 1999.  There’s just one problem.  It’s my startup
that’s doing the crazy stuff!  Yep, that’s right, my startup HubSpot, which recently raised $12 million in
venture funding is giving away $50,000 of that in a viral marketing contest. 

I figured once people get wind of this, many of my friends, colleagues and
bloggers are going to send me emails saying, “Dharmesh, what the hell?”. 
Actually, I might get an email from an investor or too as well, because we
haven’t run this by them yet.  I figured I’d try and pre-emptively answer some
of the inevitable questions.

1.  Why do it?  Well, it’s kind of simple.  We’ve been
having great success with attracting leads (and closing customers) through our
blog and other online channels.  Some of our most successful marketing efforts
have been blog articles that went viral on social media sites like digg and
reddit.  Last week, we tried to do a rough economic analysis and estimated the
value to us of leads generated from these successful pieces.  It
was high.  So, there’s opportunity here.  Plus, we don’t like spending
too much money on AdWords.  It pains us.

2.  Why not just do it ourselves?  Well, frankly, because
developing viral content that spreads like wildfire is a tricky business.  We
have a team of great folks writing content all the time for our blog (including
me), and sometimes we hit it out of the park.  But our guess is that there are
folks much more talented than us that are capable of producing
remarkable content (as Seth Godin would say).  We figured it’s worth a
shot trying to draw those people out.

3.  If it works, it could work big.  We’re at a stage now
where experimentation is reasonably cheap.  Instead of getting stuck in the rut
of turn this dial a bit, flip this switch a bit, and crank out the customers –
we’d like to look for some non-linear growth opportunities. 

Oh, and if you’re a VC reading this (particularly one of our VCs), we’re
doing the same thing in marketing that you do when looking for investments: 
Pick projects that have potentially huge impact, even if they are a bit whacky
and high-risk.  If we do a dozen of these crazy projects, if just one wins,
we’re golden!  Champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries for everyone! 

So, what are your thoughts?  Is this genius or desperation?  Would love to
hear your comments.

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  13,000+ members and growing daily.

You can also find OnStartups on Twitter.

Go to Source at onStartups.com

Warning:  I’m about to go on a bit of a rant.  I usually only reserve these kinds of articles for when things really irritate me, and this is one of those times.  I’m generally a patient, considerate person, really I am.

Here’s the source of the most irritation I’ve felt from a technology article in a [...]]]>

Warning:  I’m about to go on a bit of a rant.  I usually only reserve these
kinds of articles for when things really irritate me, and this is one of
those times.  I’m generally a patient, considerate person, really I am.

Here’s the source of the most irritation I’ve felt from a technology article
in a long time (and this from BusinessWeek, a major brand that I respect): 

Beware
The Hype For Software As A Service

I actually hesitated to even include a link to the article, because you might
be tempted to go read it.  But it has to be done.  It’s kind of like when you
smell something really awful that’s been growing in your refrigerator. 
Then, you give it to your spouse and say:  “Hey, check this out — can you
believe how bad it smells?” 

Disclaimer:  I work for a tiny little startup that provides marketing software as a service.  So, I guess
I could be biased.  I’m not wrong on this one, but I could be biased.

Back to the article.  Here are some of the issues I had:

1.  SUVs Suck, So SaaS Must Too:  The author does some
strange build-up in the opening paragraphs using “SUVs are cool” and “cell
phone causes cancer” as examples.  The point?  That both of these are/were
surrounded by “hype”.  And, we should always beware of hype.  Think of the
children!  I’m already irritated.  For the record:  I don’t think SUVs are
cool.  Oh, and these inane examples are what drove me to the title of this article.  Fight fire with fire and all that.

2.  SaaS Is Cheaper:  The article tries to refute the “myth”
that SaaS is cheaper by providing this cogent argument:  “Most service providers
charge each user by the month.”  There’s no discussion of the economics of
installed software, drive-by sales in enterprise software, or the cost of
capital for small businesses.  Hey, those SaaS vendors charge monthly, so it
must be more expensive.  Right?  That must be why Salesforce.com has
been so successful — they just charge more than Siebel.

2.  SaaS Reduces Hardware Investment :  It refutes the
“myth” that SaaS requires less hardware investment by arguing that although you
don’t have to pay for all the servers and stuff, you still have to pay
for fast access to the Internet.  Here’s the quote:  “Sure, the SaaS providers
deal with the servers, and all the Windows headaches and patches and builds and
versions and whatever. That’s their problem. But you still need fast access to
the Internet.”  The rest of this particular argument just gets worse from
there.  Now, I’m really irritated. 

3.  SaaS Is Quicker To Setup:  Yep, this is a myth that is
“busted” too.  The example provided:  “It’s kind of like assembling furniture.” 
The author provides as evidence that SaaS is not easier to setup, the fact that
he’s got a lopsided bookcase in his den.  This “proves” that little theory about
SaaS being quicker to setup, wrong.  Sure, setup costs for SaaS can be high
(based on level of customization), but on average, SaaS offerings are
simpler and quicker to get going on.

4.  Data Can Be Secure In SaaS:  The article argues that
data backup and reliability in SaaS is a myth.  Once again, we have extreme (and
in one case totally unrelated) examples offered as proof.  Yes, data security is
always a risk, but I’m not convinced that the risk is any higher for
SaaS than businesses (especially small businesses) than running the software on
your own servers, sitting in your closet somewhere.

If you think I’m being overly harsh, please read the article.  I dare you. 
And, if you do go read it, please don’t forward it around to your colleagues. 
Sometimes, you don’t need validation that the thing in your refrigerator really
does smell that bad.

End of rant.  Back to our regularly scheduled program next time.

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  13,000+ members and growing daily.

You can also find OnStartups on Twitter.

Go to Source at onStartups.com