founders, VC's, mentors and startup experts.
So, should you require a Credit Card to get started in your SaaS Free Trial? TL:DR - By asking for a Credit Card up front, you will get fewer prospects into your Free Trial with no guarantee of converting more paying customers. Now, if you'd like to know why that is, read on ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
What if I said there was something you were doing right now that was actively reducing your SaaS customer success? What if that thing you're doing was standing in the way of driving higher levels of engagement and was reducing the amount of expansion revenue you're generating while potentially increasing churn? ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
Most people running analytics work at a large company and have a big stream of users to run experiments on. Our sample sizes are much smaller, which makes even conceptually simple approaches like A/B tests problematic. Just waiting long enough to get a statistically-significant results becomes a big bottleneck. ...
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Via: PeteSearch
Brit in San Francisco, ex-Apple, Jetpac.com founder, ReadWri |
Problem: You've launched your product, it's getting plenty of coverage. People are signing up, but no one is actually using it. ...
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Via: The Intercom Blog
COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi |
Should you test one thing at a time? Or many at once? A poor experimental workflow can waste loads of your time. Here's an extreme example: We've seen a company take six months to do something that took another company thirty minutes.To grow quickly, you need to implement quickly, so our work with clients goes beyond suggesting what they should test; we build their in-house capab ...
The best kind of visitor is the one looking to buy. She knows what she wants and has a credit card in her hand. Now it's your job to seal the deal. If you're dealing with a motivated customer, you just need to make taking action easy and present a competitive and compelling offer - and answer the magic questions. ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
How do you determine which interview candidate to hire? How do you evaluate the candidate you decided you want to hire? (or decided you want to flush?) How do you make a call on which group is performing better? What metrics do you use? What data do you collect? And how do you analyze that to make a call? ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
Over the years I've talked with hundreds of clients and potential clients... conversion optimization wannabees ...
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Expert Direct Response Copywriter & Split-Testing Specialis |
The marketing funnel (sometimes called the purchase funnel or customer funnel) maps a consumer's journey toward the purchase of a product or service. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the stages of that journey and how to maximize the number who make it from one stage to the next. ...
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Via: Tom FishBurne
Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market |
Brevity rules. Brevity works. Brevity is super-cool. Why? Because it makes you a kick-ass writer. That's why. Good, concise writing is more than just writing. It's art in its purest form. It's expressing your thoughts like no other. ...
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Via: Copymatter
Innovative ideas and practical how-to advice to help you bec |
Successful businesses are often not distracted by a hundred different metrics but laser focused on one metric that is the best predictor of scale. How does a business identify such a metric? ...
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Exploring the disruption caused by online and mobile platfor |
I love, love, love numbers. But with time, touchy-feely neurons sprouted within my data brain. Minimum viable products, "release early, release often" philosophies, feedback loops, and A/B testing help optimization and decision-making but they can't guarantee that a product is awesome. ...
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Via: Elaine Wherry
co-founder of meebo |
"We" is a bad, bad word in copywriting. You should reword every line of copy you have that begins with "we". Whether in an email. Or on your website. Because your visitors don't want to hear about you. They want to hear about themselves - about their problems, about their needs, about their futures. ...
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Via: COPY HACKERS
Copywriter at http://CopyHackers.com. Staunch advocate of co |
A few reasons why I don't like Net Promoter (at least for us as a B2B SaaS provider) and think it shouldn't be used as a growth predictor ...
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Via: UserVoice
Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the |
What's more important, traffic or conversions? If you send me 50k people from a classic tractor repair website and 500 from a prominent marketing site, which one is going to be better for my business? Unless you're in the pageview... ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
There is nothing investors like more than data. We love it. It gives us something to grab onto. It gives us something to compare. It gives us the sense that we are bringing a scientific approach to an otherwise amorphous evaluation process. We look at data when assessing investments. And we look at data to benchmark the progress of those companies in which we've invested. We love data. But there's ...
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Via: Venture Blog
David Hornik is an investor at August Capital, the author of |
I'm sure you've heard it before, traffic isn't important, targeted traffic is. In this post I'm going to give you some very specific results that show how much you would be missing if you focused solely on traffic volume and not at the type of traffic you are getting. ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founder of http://webcontrolroom.com (launching soon) and ho |
In a world in which many people are time-strapped, multi-tasking and mentally scattered, the "get" factor is huge for startups. By "get", I mean how well and quickly a startup tells potential users what it does and what their product or service will do for them. It sounds simple but it's difficult to do. ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
The data you collect may be helpful at some point; but if you can't cut out the noise, you'll get buried. That's why you should think about a single metric that's most important for the stage of your company's development, a single number that you want the entire company to focus on and improve upon. I call it the One Metric That Matters. ...
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We just hit 53 full-time people at Treehouse. I've never managed this many people before so I'm having to learn as I go. I have zero formal training in management or business. I love it though, as I have a naively fresh view on how to run the company. One of the biggest challenges I'm encountering is how to align everyone's goals and communicate them clearly. To tackle this, we're creating a set o ...
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Via: The Naive Optimist
I'm a Father, entrepreneur and lover of movies. Founder and |
Churn is the silent killer for Software-as-a-Service startups. SaaS is such a great business model that people focus on the cash flow predictability of recurring revenue, high gross margins, and overall growth prospects. Churn, or losing customers, isn't talked about as frequently and is just as important to understanding the model as more popular items ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
"We need to demonstrate that we bring measurable value to the products for which we design user interfaces." Even experienced UX professionals often feel that they are not being heard by their clients, managers, and developers. Why? To overcome this problem, we need to demonstrate that we bring measurable value to the products for which we design user interfaces. ...
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Via: UXmatters
UX designer from Russia. Head of UX @ Mail.Ru. |
The world of web analytics is full of 'golden rules' about dated metrics like bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit and many more. For web applications these rules are bullshit. ...
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Via: The Intercom Blog
COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi |
What statistical procedure do I use? It's hard enough to grasp many of the concepts in statistics. Most people in UX aren't math majors and never intended to use statistics as part of their job. For this reason we have a decision tree to help you know when to use which statistical procedure. ...
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Via: Measuring Usability
Please follow @MeasuringU this account is no longer used. |
What if that marketing campaign wasn't responsible for the increase in revenue? Maybe it was the updated version that the product guys launched. Customer service also rolled out new policies. Do they get any credit? ...
Recently, there has been a lot of interest in a new, alternative approach to A/B testing. Thanks to a popular blog post with a catchy title: 20 lines of code that will beat A/B testing every time, this new, new thing was all over the Internet (Actually, it is not new. But public interest in it is new). This new approach is called multi-armed bandit algorithm, and since Visual Website Optimizer is ...
I tweeted about low-volume A/B testing the other day, and wanted to share a few thoughts. I spent a few minutes talking to Hiten Shah (CEO of KISSMetrics) on the phone, who probably knows as much about A/B testing as anyone out there. He passed on three tips that I wanted to share here: ...
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Via: Giff Constable
MD at Neo in New York; maker, designer, entrepreneur, and ag |
The difference between data-informed versus data-driven, is that you weigh the data as one piece of a messy problem you're solving with thousands of constantly changing variables. While data is concrete, it is often systematically biased. ...
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Via: Andrew Chen Blog
Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v |
We live in the age of distrust. Our bullshit detectors work at full speed and anything fishy gets caught. Any claim you make without showing proof is destined to fail. We're all skeptics. Even if you mean well, people find it hard to believe you. Here are a few principles and a 3-step sequence you can use to make your writing more believable. ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
I've been building a new product and I'm almost ready to launch it. However, I'm having a really hard time figuring out the right pricing structure so I'm going to analyze my favorite Freemium SaaS businesses. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
When I evaluate web products I often feel uncertain about what will happen after the quick signup. Sure it takes seconds to create an account, but then what? ...
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UI design, code, and product management at 37signals. |
First it works, and then it doesn't After months of iterating on different marketing strategies, you finally find something that works. However, the moment you start to scale it, the effectiveness of your marketing grinds to a halt. Sound familiar? Welcome to the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs: Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty clickthrough rates. ...
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Via: Andrew Chen Blog
Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v |
I read a great post today called "Throw Everything you Know About Ads Out the Window". The author describes how he ran a very simple test of two ads to see which would work better... The second ad generated a better CTR. Now what? Here is a list of reasons the second one might have gotten more clicks ...
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Via: Rocket Watcher
Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing |
The best thing to do is to write a narrow yet thorough site, covering as many of the angles of things people might be interested in as possible, then instrument the hell out of it. ...
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Via: What To Fix
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We analysed our trial data and found that the vast majority of people who never converted from free trial to paid-up had logged into the software only once or twice. It could be argued that this just means they quickly determined the software wasn't for them and went off into the sunset never to be seen again. Maybe. ...
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Via: kashflow
33, Founder and CEO of KashFlow - Leading UK SaaS Accounting |
Power users are your evangelists, your backup QA testers, and your visionaries. They're also by far the easiest to get in touch with (just try to avoid them - they'll find you.) It would be stupid to blindly ignore their feedback. It's also really hard to tell sometimes: is this an issue that only affects the power users? Or is it a universal thing, and they were just the first to detect it? ...
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Via: Cindy Alvarez
Making people more awesome through building better software. |
Your first sales goal is to get as many of the the right set of customers signed up as possible. You can absolutely A/B test your way into a successful launch. A launch with a laser focus, the right price, and a line around the block of people shaking fistfuls of money to give you. Here is how ...
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Attention span is the amount of time that a person can concentrate on a task without becoming distracted. Since that task can be learning about your product, figuring out if your service is right for them - it's *kind of* important. So you need to learn how to grab and hold website visitor's attention. ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
Folks who know nothing about your business will evaluate it based on the default metrics: traffic & revenue. They will advise you to increase these 2 numbers. Accepting the default metrics is bad. The top cause of startup death is trying to grow before the foundation is solid. The default metrics are dangerous because they compel you to scale prematurely and kill your company. ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
Maximizing your conversion funnels can only happen when you experiment with each element of customer interaction, dig deep into the analytics and then optimize the design. Fortunately, you don't have to test everything at once. But where should you start? In this article I'll tell you: Where you should start The most important interaction points ...
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I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
A/B testing is fundamentally a very simple concept. You have a webpage (landing page, homepage or product page) which you call version A. Now you make certain changes to it (changing headlines, buttons, colors, style or layout) and call the changed page as version B. Once you have version A and version B ready, any visitor that arrives on your webpage gets to either see version A or version B. ...
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Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast |
Have you ever left a website because it was too slow? Go ahead, raise your hand — I know I have. The speed of a site is analogous to the traveling speed on a road. If you're driving along on one road and traffic starts to slow down, you'll take a different route ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
The single biggest mistake web analysts make is working without purpose. We work very hard. We torture SiteCatalyst. We send out a lot of data. Then we resend it again and again. And yet our work results in very little impact on the business in terms of action taken by company leaders. Why? ...
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Via: Occam's Razor
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More than 95% of your visitors won't buy anything on their first visit. They're either just browsing, still in the research phase or not entirely sure yet your offer is what they need. It takes time to build trust and instill confidence ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
Value proposition is the #1 thing that determines whether people will bother reading more about your product or hit the back button. It's also the main thing you need to test – if you get it right, it will be ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
When most people think of increasing their conversions, they think of cool little tricks they can do… slight word changes to various parts of the page… or changing the colors. And if this is you, you're missing out on an enormous opportunity to not only increase your conversions, but increase the long-term results of your business… including getting the most profit possible. ...
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Expert Direct Response Copywriter & Split-Testing Specialis |
Every company I’m involved in keeps track of numbers. Daily numbers, weekly numbers, monthly numbers. Ultimately, all the numbers translate into three financial statements – the P ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
I’ve not been able to shake a recent exchange I had with an entrepreneur. Though very interesting, their company was quite early, hardly launched and pre-funded. As we talked, their enthusiasm began to bubble and proceeded to boil over. Our conversation soon turned to their very aggressive fundraising strategy and I began to push back on the thinking behind it. After a fair bit of back and f ...
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Via: Bryce DOT VC
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Somebody asked me the other day, what are all the possible ways one could increase the conversion rate? Is there a library of all the things that have made the difference? I looked for one, but couldn’t find it. So... read more ...
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Via: ConversionXL
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There is an erroneous perception in the UX community that if your method is qualitative, then numbers somehow cannot or should not be used. These perceptions come from an informal practice that stems back to the beginning of the usability profession and continues through training programs and some UX experts. Unfortunately, this perception is misguided and can prevent perfectly good data from bein ...
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Via: Measuring Usability
Please follow @MeasuringU this account is no longer used. |
Numerous times our clients and customers ask: how many visitors do I need to test in order to get statistically significant results in an A/B test? Unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question as it depends on a number of factors. In the past, we have provided you with an A/B test duration [...] Related posts:A/B test duration calculator (Excel spreadsheet) What you really ...
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Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast |
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a product video could very well be worth a thousand sales. Considering that video now appears in 70% of the top 100 search results listings, and that viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video – this is one marketing force [...] ...
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Website Improver. Author. Flavored Coffee Fanatic. Pixel Pus |
Recently I critiqued a number of websites (links at the bottom of the post) and made suggestions for improving their conversion rates. I noticed that the key problems were pretty much the same for most of them. It’s highly likely... read more ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
You may not think of a “Coming Soon†landing page as much of a target for improving conversion rates. Wrong! Just a year ago, startups like Hipster gained 10,000 subscribers virtually overnight without ever revealing their purpose. ...
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Via: Unbounce Blog
Website Improver. Author. Flavored Coffee Fanatic. Pixel Pus |
I gave my readers a Christmas present: free public feedback for their site. I got a ton of submissions and I won’t be able to cover them in a single post, so there will be many. This is the first... read more ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
Landing pages, conversion, bounce rate, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada. As important as all of those terms and concepts are, sometimes you need to step back a bit and look at things in a more playful manner. ...
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Via: Unbounce Blog
Co-founder of @Unbounce - opinionated writer on conversion o |
The worst piece of writing advice I ever heard was to write the way I talk. The next time you have a conversation, listen to yourself. If you wrote the way you talked, your writing would be riddled with space-filler words and phrases such as “like†and “um†and “you know what I mean?†You’d [...]Leave a Comment! Post by Taylor LindstromTaylor hails from B ...
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Via: Men With Pens
I don't charge by the hour. I charge by the awesome. Which m |
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